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THE SPIRIT IN LITERATURE AND LIFE. 
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%t)t imperial Christ 

BY l/^ 

JOHN PATTERSON COYLE, D. D. 

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION 



BY 

GEORGE A. GATES, D. D. 

PRESIDENT OF IOWA COLLEGE 




NOV 141 

BOSTON AND NEW\^RK 
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(3Tt)e ifttoerpibe px&, <£ambn&0e / ^ 

1896 10 



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Copyright, 1896, 
By MARY CUSHMAN COYLE. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 



DEDICATED 

TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF HIM BY WHOM 
THESE SERMONS WERE WRITTEN 



" O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever ; A Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ stand! " 

Browning's " SauV 



NOTE. 

The publication of this volume was undertaken 
at the earnest request of friends and parishioners 
who desired to retain in permanent form words 
which had been helpful and inspiring to them, and 
to preserve the fragrant memories of a noble and 
self-forgetting life. 

My thanks are gratefully offered to the many 
friends who have so freely given their assistance in 
its preparation : to President Gates for his labor 
of love in the sketch of his friend's life ; to Dr. 
James M. Whiton, of " The Outlook," for careful 
revision of the sermons ; to the group of North 
Adams friends who gave time and thought to the 
choice of the sermons to be used ; to an honored 
friend for the title given the volume ; and to many 
others who in various ways have contributed to its 
completion. 

The sermons here included were, with one or two 
exceptions, first preached to the North Adams 
people and rewritten for the Denver Church, and 
were chosen partly for that reason, but chiefly be- 



IV NOTE. 

cause they set forth that which Mr. Coyle best 
loved to preach, the imperial character and posi- 
tion of Jesus. 

Whether this volume shall serve the purpose for 
which it was prepared or not, I can but be thank- 
ful for the consolation afforded and the sad hours 
brightened by the thought and labor given to it. 
MARY CUSHMAN COYLE. 

North Adams, Mass. 
October 19, 1896. 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

Biographical Introduction vii 

I. The First Christian Duty. An Advent Ser- 
mon 1 

II. The Expectancy op Faith. An Advent Ser- 
mon 17 

III. The Origins op Jesus. A Christmas Sermon . 38 

IV. The Temptation 52 

V. Prayer 71 

VI. The Golden Rule . . . . .87 

VII. Jesus and Modern Hellenism . . . 104 

VIII. The Transfigured and Transfiguring Cross 125 

IX. The Prince of Life. An Easter Sermon . 139 

X. The Enthronement of Jesus . . . 158 

XI. Jesus, Teacher and Lord 175 

XII. The Fullness of God. A Communion Sermon 183 

XIII. The Imperialism of Christianity . . 200 

XIV. The Deluge 220 

XV. The Wine-Tilters 231 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

" The world will be filialized when it is frater- 
nized." 

The memory which John P. Coyle has left may 
not be more fittingly characterized than by the 
above words of his, — words of philosophy, exhor- 
tation, and prophecy. Few children of men have 
been better exemplifications of the filial and fra- 
ternal spirit at its best than he was. 

How can one write a chapter of biography and 
do it wisely and fairly who is compelled to confess 
that he never saw a fault in the friend who is the 
subject of it ? Such is the task laid upon me when 
asked to compile some introductory personal pages 
to this volume of sermons. Such a work is a labor 
of love indeed, but its difficulty is yet more en- 
hanced by reason of the fact that no rebuke for 
exaggeration or untruthfulness would be so sharp 
as his. Through this narrow passage lying be- 
tween a desire adequately to express the exact 
measure of honor and affection widely and gener- 
ously bestowed upon him, and on the other hand 
the hope to avoid the just condemnation of the 
manly modesty of our friend, an attempt must be 
made to steer the little craft of this chapter. 



Vin BIOGBAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Mr. Coyle was a typical American in that his 
blood was well mixed. Scotch-Irish would describe 
its predominant elements, but there was a little 
wholesome mixture of Dutch and English blood 
" in me, and as I grow older I find it playing the 
part of a conservative upper house tenacious of 
the continuities as against the impatient Celtic 
idealism of my general make-up." 

He was specially fortunate in his early home. 
Fortunate most of all in his parents, of whom he 
once wrote : "In the self-sacrificing lives of my 
parents remained to me the vision of the human 
God when every other divine light was clouded. 
From my mother I received the never forgotten 
advice to think fearlessly; and from both father 
and mother I gained an impression of the objective 
reality of the spirit of Christlikeness which could 
not be effaced by years of black doubt and dreary 
agnosticism. To them belongs the credit if I have 
been able to think through any one of the prob- 
lems of the age." 

He was born near East Waterford, Juniata 
County, Pennsylvania, May 3, 1852. He was 
the second of the ten children of David Scott and 
Matilda Longwell Coyle. Both parents belonged 
to that Scotch-Irish race which, coming to this 
country before the Revolution, settled many sec- 
tions of Pennsylvania and endured all the hard- 
ships of pioneer life. 

Mr. Coyle' s father was a man of more than 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. ix 

ordinary intelligence, having a good education 
preparatory to a college course, which ill health 
prevented his getting. He was a teacher for some 
time prior to his marriage, when he returned to 
his father's home near the little hamlet of East 
Waterford. His health was always precarious, so 
much so that he was unable to go into the army. 
He was, however, a hard-working and successful 
farmer, gaining not riches, for he was too wise to 
hoard, but for his children what was far better, 
a solid education and the memory of a home life 
moving on high planes. The father was a quiet 
man whose few words were worth hearing. He 
was a man of sweet and gentle spirit, combined 
with unswerving integrity; a true man of God, 
not only righteous, but lovably and gently good. 

To the mother was left the discipline of the fam- 
ily, and she was well fitted for it. As frank and 
free of speech as her husband was reticent, her 
quick wit, independent spirit, and power of initia- 
tive supplemented his conservative, steady, grave 
character, making them ideal parents, and giving 
their son, through the harmonious combination of 
these marked characteristics, a personality of rare 
beauty and strength. 

Mr. Coyle's home was such a one as story-tellers 
love to describe. They abound in tales of Scotch 
life as in Maclaren's stories, in biographies like 
David Livingstone's and John G. Paton's. The 
family was old school Presbyterian. The older 



x BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

children were baptized and preached to during 
their earlier years by an aged Scotch minister, 
Rev. Andrew Jardine, whose brogue was so heavy 
as to put him almost beyond the range of intelligi- 
bility to the young people. A neighboring Scotch 
minister, Rev. Mr. Allison, used to visit the family 
and, according to their national and ecclesiastical 
customs, take the children on his knee, hear them 
recite the Shorter Catechism, and give them some 
psalm to have ready learned for him when he 
should come again. Mr. Coyle's father and grand- 
father were elders in the church and usually enter- 
tained visiting ministers, so that a religious atmos- 
phere, not only in the home itself, but from its 
visitors, constantly surrounded the children until 
grown up. This lad heard only Rouse's version of 
the psalms in the church ; to sing a hymn would 
have been heretical, and an organ was the summit 
of sacrilege. At the communion services only those 
gathered around the Lord's table who had received 
on the day previous a " token " that they were 
members of the church in good standing. 

Sundays in that home were stiffly observed. 
Sometimes after all were in bed Saturday night 
a voice would be raised, "Is the coffee ground? " 
If not, some one must up and dress and to the 
kitchen and grind it, else there would be no coffee 
on Sunday. But the children had their amuse- 
ments with limitations less felt then than realized 
in later life. 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xi 

The books on which the children in this home 
fed had mental and moral vigor in them that would 
astound later generations of educators and children. 
They were such as one would now expect to find 
only in the hands of college students, but were 
given to these children of ten or twelve. 

The parents wisely interested themselves in the 
education of their children in the home. One 
quiet study hour was set apart every evening, when 
no one was allowed to speak from seven to eight ; 
but when the clock struck eight, volumes of 
questions broke loose, mingled with clatter and 
somersault and almost inextinguishable ante-bed- 
time frolic. It was suspected by the children 
that the silent hour was designed as much for the 
protection of the parents as for the benefit of the 
children. There may have been something in it ; 
the two tired parents needed the hour for reading 
and resting. If the young lad did not exhibit 
his full share of boyish exuberance in play, then 
his childhood differed materially from his later life, 
for one seldom meets a more wide-awake conversa- 
tionist than Mr. Coyle. Indeed, stories have come 
down of how he used to work off his abounding 
mental vigor when he was very young. The activi- 
ties of his later life and the direction of them were 
presaged when, a child of ten or twelve, he used to 
mount the corncrib for a rostrum and play orator 
to an audience consisting of an older sister. His 
subjects were manifold, ranging from theology to 



xu BIOGBAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

politics. He gave vociferous vent to the scorn he 
felt for the various wrongs he could see in the 
neighborhood. It is said that old neighbors re- 
member hearing some of these speeches half a mile 
away ; later " neighbors " have heard speeches of 
his of like topic and tendency several thousand 
miles away. 

Such was his home. It was in a neighborhood 
of such sturdy homes. His mother's family, Long- 
well, was of Irish descent. Mr. Coyle's great- 
grandfather on his mother's side came to this 
country when a young man, and kept up a corre- 
spondence with an older brother who was a profes- 
sor of belles-lettres in a college in Cork. There 
seems to be a line of pedagogic stock in the family. 
His grandmother's name was Patterson, and she 
belonged to a well-known and numerous and widely 
scattered Scotch family of that name in central 
Pennsylvania. From both grandfathers down to 
his own time of the war of the Eebellion the 
family were all ardent Abolitionists. In the later 
fifties many a fight did the youngsters have with 
their schoolmates, maintaining such opinions as 
they heard at home. 

This part of the State was settled early by peo- 
ple who remained on the old homesteads or in the 
near community generation after generation and 
prided themselves on their right to the country. 
They were stern, upright, with a pride of intellect 
that makes it no wonder their sons studied the- 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xm 

ology, and no wonder that other families coming 
in were influenced toward a dignified and whole- 
some life. None were wealthy : all well-to-do and 
self-respecting. Such communities seem rare now- 
a-days, when the modern marvelous conveniences 
of travel seem to be bringing in a later type of 
nomad. Such a community was no small part of 
the educational influence surrounding the youth 
ol Mr. Coyle. This communal atmosphere helped 
shape his spirit and determine his career as really 
as the home and schools. 

Mr. Coyle was fortunate again in his teachers. 
His first schoolhouse was of logs, and stood in a 
clearing with primeval forest on three sides of it, 
a fact which was a beautiful memory to him in 
his manhood. Here he received most thorough 
training in the fundamental branches under a 
Miss Lucy Price, who seems to have been a born 
teacher. She found this bright boy interesting 
and responsive in the studies then mostly in vogue, 
such as grammar, mental arithmetic, and beginning 
algebra. She used to say that those Coyle chil- 
dren kept her studying to stay ahead of them. 

At fourteen he left home to work in a country 
grocery store, after a year of which he entered 
the Millersville Normal School, where he remained 
two years. Mr. Coyle' s father preserved for years, 
as among his choicest treasures, a letter written by 
the lad from this school, in which he stated that 



xiv BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

having recently become a Christian he had decided 
to be a minister. About this time his father 
moved to Port Royal, Pennsylvania, a small town 
on the Pennsylvania Railroad, that the children 
might have the advantage of the fine academy 
there. This institution, known as Airy View 
Academy, like the New England academies of the 
period, was the centre of culture for the commu- 
nity and a large farming region about it. It stim- 
ulated the ambition of the boys and girls for gen- 
uine knowledge and bred high character. It was 
at this time in charge of Mr. David Wilson, who 
was well known and is still remembered all through 
that part of the country as the educator of that 
part of Pennsylvania. His academy course laid 
solid foundation for college and theological semi- 
nary. 

He entered Princeton in 1872, his academy 
course enabling him to make the sophomore class. 

Like hundreds of the sturdy youth of America, 
Mr. Coyle earned his way through college by 
teaching and acting as tutor. He worked tremen- 
dously and lived on the smallest outlay, making 
every material sacrifice that was fairly possible. 
He graduated high in rank in a class of seventy- 
one members. 

His first year in college he ranked sixteenth in 
the class ; in the second year he rose to the eleventh 
position ; in his last year his grade was sixth. 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xv 

That record is what we should expect of a youth 
like this for two reasons : the ablest college stu- 
dents almost without exception raise their relative 
grades during their college course ; moreover, the 
studies in which a young man of his type of mind 
would most surely excel are the more severely test- 
ing ones where the student must do his own think- 
ing, such as psychology, ethics, political science, and 
philosophy. In five of the studies of the senior 
year his rank was between ninety-nine and one 
hundred. In mathematical studies he proved 
himself also very strong. 

The mediaeval discipline reckoned logic and 
mathematics in the same department, with meta- 
physics closely allied. It was in these departments 
that Mr. Coyle's mind was particularly strong even 
from childhood. He says of himself that at a very 
early period he found his mind resting in " about 
the only system of a priori theology that can 
satisfy the demands of logic, — Supralapsarian 
Calvinism. I took the same kind of non-spirit- 
ual and non-moral satisfaction in Calvinism that I 
did in the Binomial Theorem, and that is how it 
happened my mind was at ease. It was the kind 
of mind that liked that kind of thing. I was a 
mathematician by right of inheritance from both 
parents. 

" While in college I found my philosophical 
consciousness, as everybody with any sort of head 
did, at the touch of President McCosh's magnifi- 



-xvi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

cent personality. I had begun to be dissatisfied 
with algebraic theology, and to listen to the voice 
of the Zeit-Geist." 

At the end of his second year in college he was 
elected one of the seven speakers of " Junior Ora- 
tor " night of commencement. At his graduation 
the next year he was chosen by his classmates to 
the honorable position for the " Memorial Ora- 
tion " on Class Day. 

The first year after his graduation he was a 
teacher in a military school in Stamford, Connecti- 
cut. While there he received. an invitation to an 
instructorship in Latin in Princeton, which he ac- 
cepted and held for two years, from 1877 to 1879. 

Nearly all men of Mr. Coyle's virility of mind 
seem compelled to pass through a period more or 
less prolonged of great mental and spiritual strug- 
gle. This was true of him all through his college 
years, but it seemed to reach a climax during his 
tutorship in Princeton. He had dedicated himself 
to the Christian ministry, and was now finding what 
so many have found, tremendous obstacles across 
his path. The atmosphere of Princeton at this 
time was by no means soporific. Over in the The- 
ological Seminary was the venerable Dr. Hodge 
" spending his last breath in proving, with frequent 
sobbing and tears, — which arguments, however 
illegitimate, were to those who knew the sublime 
and childlike sincerity of the man very convincing, 
— that Darwinism was desolate atheism." Dr. 



BIOGRAPHICAL IXTBODUCTIOX. xvn 

McCosh, on the other hand, was defending Darwin- 
ism at a time when such defense cost something. 

In 1887 the writer of this chapter, calling on 
Dr. McCosh, ventured to suggest that some of the 
younger men of America were keenly appreciative 
of the debt we were then owing to him for the 
stalwart position he had taken some years earlier 
touching the changes in philosophical thought 
necessitated by the growing confidence in the 
general theory of evolution. He will not forget 
how that venerable man stopped in his walk, turned 
about, and with much impressiveness said, " I told 
them, I told them the theory of descent was true, 
and they would not believe me.'' It was always 
somewhat difficult for him to understand how it 
could be that when he "told them" anything, 
they should have any hesitation in accepting what 
he told them as a finality. 

Mr. Coyle says of these days in Princeton : 
" The leaders of Christian thought in the college, 
and all over the English-speaking world for that 
matter, were inventing compromises and fixing 
limits to which science might £0 without altogether 
sacrificing the theistic proofs. But Supralapsarian 
Calvinism had not prepared me to accept compro- 
mises. There was a considerable circle of us who 
thought we saw through it. TTe were told of no 
theism that did not depend upon the violation, 
once or twice at least, of the genetic continuity. 
The college instructors, though more ready than 



xvm BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Dr. Hodge to recognize the actual conquests of 
science, were really fighting the same battle as he, 
and we knew it ; they were denying the primary 
postulate of modern science. It seemed to. us that 
we must either be thoroughly anti-scientific, or 
else carry out consistently the logic of the scientific 
principle." 

There are few more interesting parts of a man's 
life than that which reveals the growth of his 
maturest convictions through the periods of intel- 
lectual and spiritual birth up to higher planes. 
Fortunately, Mr. Coyle has left for us, in a state- 
ment presented to his installing council, in 1887, 
in North Adams, his own account of this period of 
his life. The following, as the last two quotations, 
is from that statement : — 

" For my own part I could not decide what to 
do, and began a series of oscillations between the 
two extremes which must have made the impres- 
sion upon my acquaintances that I was the most 
contradictory person alive. One week I was a 
scoffing agnostic going about stirring up contro- 
versy wherever I could ; the next, by a masterly 
act of volition and a special season of prayer and 
sometimes fasting, I had become a vehemently 
evangelical Christian, organizing prayer circles at 
all hours of the day or night and laying hold of 
men to drag them into the Kingdom of Heaven. 
I passed between these extremes so suddenly and 
so often that many doubted my honesty, and it 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xix 

seems to me now a wonder they did not doubt 
my sanity. Maybe they did. For the most part, 
however, I kept the two lives distinct. I had too 
much respect and affection for the men whose so- 
ciety I sought in my religious mood to try my dia- 
lectics very often on them. It was another class 
of Christians whom I delighted to torment. I was 
altogether sincere in both my characters. I main- 
tained religious exercises for the reason that hav- 
ing been born and reared a Christian I thought 
the presumption was to be regarded as in favor 
of Christianity until it had been overthrown ; and 
that it had been I never affected to believe. I was 
only an agnostic, not an infidel. By means of con- 
ditional clauses I preserved my honesty in these 
devotions, and sometimes there was in them a vast 
deal of genuine fervor. 

" I never scoffed at the name of Christ, and if 
any one did so in my presence it sickened me as if 
my father or mother had been assailed. But I was 
unable to say a word in his defense, for I had 
been taught that the only logical alternatives were 
to reject him altogether, or to accept him as a 
corollary to the current philosophical theism, and 
it was that which had crumbled under the blows 
of agnostic criticism. A lingering personal affec- 
tion for the Christ on one hand, and a conviction 
of the truth of scientific agnosticism on the other, 
and the belief that the two could not be harmo- 
nized, produced in me that dual personality almost 



XX BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

as distressing and strange as the now famous case 
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This condition of 
affairs continued four years after ray graduation. 
I was aware that the agnostic state while superior 
intellectually was vastly inferior to the other in 
moral tone. It was my Mr. Hyde, and it fright- 
ened me to observe that it was growing more per- 
sistent, and refused to go as readily as it once did 
in answer to prayer and the bidding of the will, and 
it began to distinctly advocate the letting down of 
the high moral standard I had always maintained. 
I saw, much less clearly to be sure than I see now, 
and yet with sufficient distinctness to induce defi- 
nite action, that a crisis had come, and that there 
was no help for me where I was, and I resigned 
my tutorship in the college, to go upon a pilgrim- 
age to find somewhere or other the truth, if there 
was any to be found. Plans to go to Europe hav- 
ing fallen through, I went to Chicago, having 
heard that Professor Francis L. Patton, now of 
Princeton, was unlike every one else in his man- 
ner of dealing with inquirers. Having told the 
Faculty of the Seminary that I was an intel- 
lectual nihilist who believed no single concrete 
proposition that could be named, that I came as a 
truth-seeker, and that if I found Christianity to be 
what it claimed, my lifework should be to preach 
it, I was reluctantly allowed to matriculate. 

" I have never been able distinctly to recall the 
experiences of the first few months I was in Chi- 



BIOGBAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxi 

cago. I read nothing. Dr. Patton never lectured. 
His classes were debating clubs, where everybody 
talked at once except the professor, who sat and 
looked on as serene as Jove. So much like a 
strange dream does it seem to me that it would 
not much surprise me to learn that I had been out 
of my senses, and that the Northwestern Theolo- 
gical Seminary was an asylum where I recovered 
my mental equipoise. Dr. Patton, without seem- 
ing to impart anything, treated me so skillfully 
that in four or five months I was on solid founda- 
tions that have never since been moved. He did 
not teach me his system, for, like Socrates, he held 
his office to be that of intellectual midwife. The 
little I know of his distinctive theology I do not 
much like, and I have no reason to suppose that 
he likes mine any better ; but to him I owe it 
largely that I have one at all. 

" The first step that did not have to be retraced 
was to ignore and override the supposed contradic- 
tion between scientific agnosticism and a personal 
love and loyalty to the Christ, who still lingered in 
my affections. It was a meagre conception I could 
form of him, for it must be held subject to all 
the possible results of criticism. It was partly an 
ideal, partly an admitted concrete historical fact, 
partly a thing I had seen with my own eyes chiefly 
in my parents, and to a very small extent realized 
in my own life. In determining to follow and 
worship such a Christ as I knew, I broke the 



xxil BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

thralldom of intellectualism and restored to my 
spiritual part the right to exercise its functions. 
I also thereby set at defiance the implicit assump- 
tion of the current philosophical theism that the 
rightfulness of Christ's claim to discipleship is 
contingent upon a mere corollary to the conclusive- 
ness of its own proofs. Agnosticism had taken 
away my God and philosophical theism had prom- 
ised to restore Him, but had failed. I had waited 
years, had traversed the arguments over and over 
again with a bias in favor of theism, but was 
compelled to render the reluctant verdict that, 
as between the two, agnosticism had the best of it. 
But I had learned that agnosticism was morally 
debilitating, while the service of the Christ, even in 
spite of what I supposed to be reason, was elevat- 
ing. It seemed as though I was obliged to choose 
between the Good and the True. I had chosen 
the Good, and somehow satisfied my mind that I 
was not thereby compromising the True. I sus- 
pect that my reasoning to that effect at the time 
was far fetched, though now I see that no such 
dilemma should ever have been presented, and it 
was the fault of official theism that it ever was. 

" Beginning to serve the Christ as a worthy 
Master, independent altogether of his relations to 
theism, I found that soon a new Spirit began tak- 
ing ' the things of Christ ' and showing them to 
me, something like as the Spirit of the Age had 
forced upon my attention the things of science and 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxin 

compelled me to admit their truth. This Spirit 
did not obtrude itself upon my notice, and my 
knowledge of its operations is the result of subse- 
quent analysis. But it was a still greater, more 
positive and authoritative, more thoroughly objec- 
tive and personal spirit than the Zeit-Geist. Its 
appeal was not to my intellect alone, but to my 
whole manhood, and it made me feel that it would 
be mortal sin not to follow its teachings. It 
showed me larger and deeper things than the Zeit- 
Geist had shown, and much extended my horizon 
of true knowledge. In my enthusiasm over the 
new-found method I jumped at conclusions and 
reconstructed too hastily, and built into my system 
much material old and new that had to be taken 
out again. But the unmistakable things of Christ 
were being gradually revealed and proven beyond. 
doubt by the testimony and authority of that 
Spirit. It has been shown to me, and so thor- 
oughly am I convinced of it that I will stake my 
destiny on its truth, that Christ came from and 
returns to the Eternal One ; that he is entitled to 
the name of the Eternally Begotten Son of the 
agnostic's Unknown God ; that this Spirit which 
testified these things is at once his Spirit and the 
Spirit of the Unknown. This persuasion of the 
absolute and unqualified deity of Christ is strong- 
est when I am in the clearest and most elevated 
mood intellectually and morally, or else when I 
am engaged in disinterested service of others. So 



XXIV BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

far from conflicting with the scientific principle it 
rather completes and harmonizes the actual results 
and prophetic suggestions of science. If there is 
any mysticism in it, it is not one that depends 
upon a temporary paralysis of the rational facul- 
ties or a darkening of the true external senses. 
So far from being a subjective impression it re- 
sponds in a preeminent degree to all the scientific 
tests of an objective perception. Undue introspec- 
tion, self-seeking, or any other perversion of the 
objective faculties or altruistic impulses causes the 
proof of his deity rather to disappear. From all 
which I am prepared to maintain that my persua- 
sion of that deity is of the nature of true objective 
knowledge. It has taken possession of my life as 
the one truth worth knowing, the truth in the light 
of which I am to judge all other alleged truths, 
and upon which I am to base all my hopes. 

" This is not a truth which necessitates any con- 
flicts with scientific agnosticism. The Unknown 
is still as inscrutable as agnosticism ever declared 
It to be. No real conception of It is possible. 
But if Christ is Its eternally begotten Son, the 
same in substance and co-equal with It, we are 
justified in forming a symbolical conception of It 
which cannot fail to be relatively true, as of the 
Worthy Father of such a Son. In spite, therefore, 
of the breakdown of philosophical theism, I claim 
the right to describe the Unknowable as the Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, a description indefinite 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxv 

enough to satisfy Herbert Spencer's demand that 
all conceptions of the Unknowable be at once sym- 
bolical and nascent, and yet one that warrants me 
in throwing my life into his arms with a childlike 
abandon that sets my heart forever at rest." 

In a late sermon of Mr. Coyle occur these words : 
" Dr. McCosh, who passed away the other day full 
of years and honor, was my master in philosophy. 
I do not hold as he did. . . . He is my master, 
not because he holds my mind in thrall, but be- 
cause he set it free and gave it a method and a 
stimulus. He is the author of my philosophical 
life, in that but for him I might never have had 
any such life. So Jesus is the author of my social 
ideal whether he ever held it or not ; it is founded 
upon him and springs from his spirit whether it 
was ever in his mind or not." 

Mr. Coyle is not the only man of his generation 
who found rough traveling during the times when 
tremendous intellectual strides were demanded of 
young men in their mature student years, from 
'75 to '85. It was the birth-time of modern phi- 
losophy. That philosophy, made imperative by the 
achievements of physical science, the universalizing 
of the theory of evolution, is the greatest generali- 
zation the mind of man has ever known. It cul- 
minates in a complete Unity philosophy. That 
philosophy is as yet by no means finished, but its 
main foundations have been laid not to be moved. 



XXVI BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Mr. Coyle matured the germ thoughts expressed 
in substance in the above quotation, and some of 
the choicest of them appear in this book. These 
views are found most completely elaborated in his 
other volume, " The Spirit in Literature and 
Life." 

In the seminary vacation from April to Septem- 
ber, 1880, he preached in a home missionary Pres- 
byterian church in Farmer City, Illinois. In April, 
1881, he was licensed to preach by the now some- 
what famously conservative Huntingdon Presby- 
tery of Pennsylvania. In October of the same 
year he accepted a call to the Union Church in 
Ludlow, Massachusetts, where he was ordained 
and installed May 3, 1882, — his thirtieth birth- 
day. 

Ludlow was a small manufacturing village, with 
the limitations of all such villages, into which he 
came as a beautiful, light-giving presence. People 
of all classes came to realize that the bright-faced, 
boyish-looking man who met every one, old and 
young, with such ready comradeship, was thor- 
oughly genuine, unselfish to a fault, truthful in all 
his relations to himself, his friends, his church, and 
his theology, absolutely fearless in his pursuit of 
truth, and in life and spirit a true follower of Jesus 
Christ, for whom no day or hour was a vacation 
from earnest service of his Master. 

It is deeply interesting to recall the great empha- 
sis which, in these Ludlow sermons, he laid upon 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxvn 

unselfishness ; it was a continually recurring 
theme, — the beauty of and the imperative demand 
for unselfishness, — Jesus, the Head Man of the 
race, because the ideally unselfish man, — the life 
given to service for others the only true life. 
These and kindred subjects were so often touched 
upon as to create an impression which could not be 
effaced from the minds of the hearers. This teach- 
ing was made most effective by a life of service 
for all members of the little village, without regard 
to creed or condition. In every way he sought to 
uplift and brighten their lives, giving them active 
help, cheering words, and tender sympathy, as each 
was required. So he went into their homes, and 
where they were discouraged with poverty and 
monotony he cheered them with hope of better 
days, which he often was able to help to bring. 
Often, when the neglect, or worse than the neglect, 
of husband and father had brought desolation, his 
fearless indignation and persistent efforts were 
able to bring the man to a sense of his duty and 
obligation ; or in case of sore distress, when they 
were dying in filth and neglect, he watched with 
the sick and suffering. 

He was very successful in efforts for the com- 
munity life, especially in the establishment of 
a reading-room, and later in starting a library, 
which was so eagerly welcomed by the people that 
a member of the company gave to the village an 
endowed library, with a suitable building. 



xxvm BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Mr. Coyle succeeded in gaining the confidence 
both of the mill-owners, with their agent, Mr. 
L. H. Brigham, and of the employees, so that 
when a strike occurred, two years after he left 
Ludlow, his service as arbitrator was sought by 
the men and accepted by Mr. Brigham. One of 
the best pieces of writing that he ever did was an 
article published in the " Homiletic Review " of 
January, 1893, under the title, " What the Work- 
ingman may ask of the Minister." After speak- 
ing of the necessity that the minister should not 
degenerate into a demagogue, but be in sympathetic 
relations with the employer, he says : — 

" In this age of democracy the man who needs 
to condescend to get on a common footing with 
the wage earner has a natural blemish which unfits 
him for the sacred office of the Christian minis- 
try. Nor need he thank to succeed by finding a 
church that wants a man of that type. There are, 
unfortunately, many such churches, but they ought 
not to have what they want. What they need is 
an apostolic man of the opposite stamp to convert 
them, or destroy them if they are past conversion. 
The one thing worse than a clerical snob is a 
church full of snobs." 

Partly because of his engagement to a member 
of the church, partly that he might be near the 
New York libraries, he resigned at the end of two 
years, against the earnest protests of the Ludlow 
people. In January of 1884 he became pastor of 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxix 

the Morrisania Congregational Church, New York 
city. February 7, 1884, he married Miss Mary 
Cushman, daughter of his predecessor in Ludlow. 
Two children were born to them : David Cushman, 
and Grace Long well, both born in North Adams. 
Their home life was ideal. There was perfect 
sympathy between husband and wife in all the 
realms of his activity, thought, and purpose. The 
home was under the complete domination of con- 
science and affection. 

It was at this time that the writer of this chap- 
ter first met him, sometimes at a little club of a 
dozen ministers of all denominations in New York 
city, sometimes in connection with the New Jer- 
sey Association, with which company of Congre- 
gational ministers he often met, attracted by the 
fellowship he found among its members, which 
at that time included such men as Dr. James M. 
Whiton, Dr. Amory H. Bradford, and Dr. Wil- 
liam De Witt Hyde. In both these places he soon 
showed himself an inspiring talker and profound 
thinker. I am sure there is not one of that com- 
pany of men who would not give him a high prom- 
inence among us in ability to take the lead in the 
keenest philosophical discussions. It was through 
such discussions as these that he was coming to 
be known for the power and spirit that was in 
him, so that it was not surprising that the strong 
church in North Adams, Massachusetts, which had 
enjoyed the ministry of men like Dr. Washington 



xxx BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Gladden, Dr. Llewellyn Pratt, and Dr. Theodore 
T. Munger, should turn to this young man and 
find in him a worthy successor of all who had 
gone before him. 

The North Adams pastorate was somewhat more 
than eight years long. In the fall of 1894 he 
reluctantly sundered the relation with this church, 
into which his very life had gone, and accepted the 
pastorate of the First Congregational Church at 
Denver, Colorado. November 2, 1894, he began 
his Denver ministry. Just three months later he 
was stricken down with neuralgia of the heart, 
followed in two days by a valvular trouble of 
the heart itself. After three days of severe ill- 
ness he rallied, and was for some days supposed to 
be beyond danger. Then he was taken suddenly 
worse, and died February 21, 1895. It seems 
probable that he had had light attacks a year or 
two before, and that the disease had fastened its 
fatal grip upon him before he left North Adams. 
Undoubtedly the change to the higher altitude 
hastened the end. Funeral services were held in 
the church in Denver, President "W. F. Slocum, 
Jr., of Colorado College, and others speaking. 

The final service was in his own church in North 
Adams, most tenderly endeared to him by his long- 
est, maturest, and best ministry. The city which 
he loved and lifted to higher municipal conscious- 
ness furnishes the resting-place of his body. Pro- 
fessor John Bascom, of Williams College, a friend 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxxi 

close to him in profoundest intellectual and spirit- 
ual sympathy, spoke the last words of affectionate 
farewell. 

Before the close of this pastorate, Mr. Coyle 
was the foremost citizen of North Adams. Of him 
it can be truly said, as rarely of men, that he mag- 
nified his office ; he was the minister, the Chris- 
tian minister, first of his church, then of the 
community, with a rapidly increasing influence far 
beyond its borders. 

He believed in his church, and made his church 
believe in itself. He carried into it a royal and 
mighty enthusiasm. His church was a place of 
life. There was the air about it of not merely 
getting on with the regular routine of worship and 
meetings, but it was a centre of intense and high 
activities. The strong leader in all its work was 
Mr. Coyle himself. For him to touch any com- 
pany or minor organization or movement or pur- 
pose was to give it of his abounding life. Whatever 
discouragements or sense of failure he may have 
known, he had an exceptionally helpful ability to 
keep those feelings to himself. What he gave out 
was hope and courage and cheer and enthusiasm. 
His idea was that it should be a democratic church, 
not one supported and administered by the few 
best able financially to carry on its work, but 
thoroughly and in every best sense a church of all 
the members, prominent and humble, rich and 
poor, old and young. Its public services were 
always dignified. 



xxxn BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

He gave large attention to the order and majesty 
of the services of worship. He never allowed his 
own part in the pulpit or any other department of 
the church work to drop down to the commonplace. 
But it was the true dignity of earnestness, not 
merely the stiffness of formality. There was ever 
present a thoroughly live and energetic purpose- 
fulness in all his ministrations. Some of his 
warmest and closest personal friends, as well as 
some of the most valued helpers in every high 
work of the church, were among its humblest 
members, as this world counts humbleness. On 
the other hand, no apostle of the commonplace 
was he, for to him, where human lives and hearts 
and interests are concerned, there could be no 
commonplace. He was a man who always hon- 
ored the true dignities of life. I certainly do not 
know that I have ever met any man who cared so 
little for the conventionalities that emphasize un- 
worthy distinctions, neither just nor helpful. He 
was so far above them that he hardly needed to 
fight them : he was almost ignorant of their exist- 
ence. He lived on a spiritual, truly human, there- 
fore truly divine, plane up above those chilling 
fogs and miasms. There are few pastorates in 
America that have left behind richer memories or 
holier affections than that of his in North Adams. 
The best records of such a work cannot be written, 
and are inaccessible for the biographer. But there 
is enough overflow of the spirit that is there in 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxxm 

church and community to give one a vivid reali- 
zation of the buried treasures in the homes and 
hearts of the people. 

Some of his best work, into which he put the 
utmost measure of fidelity, was with the children. 
I have not known of any American preacher who 
has made so fine a success of the five-minute ser- 
mons to children, with which he was accustomed to 
preface his main morning discourses. The children 
of the church and congregation were made to feel 
that he was their sympathetic elder brother. These 
children's sermons were kept up during the greater 
part of his ministry. When he stopped once they 
begged him to begin again. During the last few 
years he took the unusual course of devoting the 
entire time on Communion Sundays to the chil- 
dren, partly to secure their attendance on a day 
when they were likely to be absent, and partly to ' 
put in simple form lessons which the elders would 
best receive in that way. 

Some of his most careful preparation for the 
pulpit was for the prayers. The chief prayer of 
the Sunday-morning service grew to be a strong 
and beautiful petition for the people ; and certain 
phrases are remembered and treasured by them, 
such as the prayer for the nation that " it might 
be a Messianic nation," and the prayer for the 
sick " to make efficient the skill of physician and 
nurse." There were those who said this ten-min- 
ute prayer was too long; but others more dis- 



xxxiv BIOGBAPHICAL INTBODUCTION. 

cerning found it a most inspiring, purifying, and 
elevating part of the service. It was not like the 
perfunctory, mechanical, formal, frigid prayers so 
often heard in public worship, but real prayer, 
sacerdotal if one please, in which the congregation 
was verily edified and forced by the very power 
and uplift of it to join and be swept along. 

In addition to the usual two preaching services 
in his own church, every third Sunday, in rotation 
with the other ministers of North Adams, he 
preached in the afternoon in Blackinton, a small 
factory village containing a union church. To an- 
other village he went once a month for preaching 
services Sunday afternoon. He did much pas- 
toral work in both these communities. A fine 
class of Welsh and Scotch people in both places 
took to him with all their hearts, and he enjoyed 
his work with them. 

When Mr. Coyle first went to North Adams, 
realizing the importance and difficulties of this 
large work, he said to the committee that he would 
remain six years on trial, and then give them a 
chance to elect him again. Though they professed 
to have forgotten it, he insisted on abiding by his 
word, and resigned much against the will of his 
closest friends. His resignation was sincere. But 
the vote was unanimous in asking him to remain. 
Among the people most interested in his staying 
were the little outlying communities already men- 
tioned. They said, " Every man, woman, and child 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxxv 

wants him to stay." A small boy stepped up to 
him one day as he was driving through Blackin- 
ton, with the question, " Hope you are not going 
away, Mr. Coyle ? " He replied that he could not 
tell yet. And the boy said very heartily, " We 
cannot afford to lose such a man as you, Mr. 
Coyle." From a ten-year-old boy it was amusing 
and touching. As he had done at Ludlow, Mr. 
Coyle occasionally watched with the sick here, 
where a nurse could not be afforded or obtained. 
To his wife's earnest protests he replied that " it 
was the only chance he had to do a Christian act 
which was not professional." 

There is no faithful minister of the Gospel who, 
as he contrasts the ideal of his work with his ac- 
tual achievements, does not feel that he is more 
or less of a failure. Probably some expression in 
the pulpit to that effect called forth the following 
from one of his most intelligent and sympathetic 
parishioners : — 

"I have felt so strong an inclination to chal- 
lenge a statement which you made yesterday, that 
I am going to yield to it. It is not true that you 
have failed either in your educational or evangelis- 
tic work among us, unless you estimate the latter 
entirely by count of heads. I do not' believe the 
whole character of a church was ever more com- 
pletely changed in the same space of time, and that 
under peculiar difficulties at the start. . . . You 
have united us and changed our ambitions. . . . 



xxxvi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

The people, as a whole, are not only more intelli- 
gent, but are more emotional in the best sense. 
There is a decided spirit of affection for one 
another, without regard to social position. Upon 
individual lives within and without the church, 
you have had great influence, and I do not mean 
that you have simply satisfied mental doubts ; 
you have changed characters. . . . This has not 
been had in the impersonal way. It is not only 
your message that has wrought this change, but 
the presence of your life among us. You have a 
church that loves you.'''' 

It was an act quite characteristic of him that 
when he first went to North Adams, though his 
family was to live in a beautiful parsonage for 
which they had no furniture nor any money to buy 
it, he declined to accept any gifts from his people. 
He gradually furnished the house as he could save 
the money, though it required some years. Some 
of his people were offended at his strong position, 
but on the whole he gained more than he lost. Peo- 
ple were compelled to respect him ; they knew he 
could not be bought. This is his statement of his 
view : — 

" There is one kind of self-love that must be 
cherished. Not that which loves life more than 
all things, but that which, recognizing that there is 
a manhood more noble than life, scorns the temp- 
tation to sacrifice that manhood. Duty may call 
one to lay down his life for others, and every noble 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION, xxxvn 

impulse may second the call ; but duty never de- 
mands or justifies the surrender of one's manhood. 
No sacrifice of manhood can do anything but harm 
to others, and therefore unselfishness never de- 
mands it. This manhood which we are to cherish 
with such jealousy is a kind of super self or self 
beyond the self. It can never be injured except 
by the consent and connivance of the lower self, 
and therefore one of the best exercises of self-con- 
quest is that involved in protecting one's man- 
hood ; and it takes not selfishness but self-respect 
to do it. . . . 

" It may seem to many persons ungracious in a 
pastor to announce to his people that he does not 
wish to receive gifts of value even as tokens of 
friendship. ... It is not because I do not wish 
to win your affection and expressions of affection. 
I covet nothing more, . . . but it must be on 
equal terms. I am a poor man and cannot cope 
with you who are rich in exchanging gifts ; and 
my self-respect would not allow me to be always 
the receiver and never the giver. If you express 
your affection for me in gifts of value, I also have 
an affection for you and I must reciprocate in kind 
some time, and you would be much surprised if I 
sent you a fifty-dollar bill. You see although I 
am a minister, I am also, and still more, a man, 
and I welcome affection, not as a minister, but as a 
man, and I must repay it also as a man. I do not 
want gifts of value from the rich, therefore, because 



xxxvm BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

I am poor and cannot afford it ; and I do not want 
them from the poor because they are poor and can- 
not afford it. Moreover, it is, as you know, a prin- 
ciple that gifts should always be exchanged only 
on the plane where the parties are equal. All 
transactions on other planes should be business 
transactions and by definite contract. Gifts of 
friendship by a law of taste should be without 
commercial value. 

" There is another reason why I desire that no 
expressions of friendship come to me of commer- 
cial value. This church is, I am glad to say, made 
up of rich and poor together. I seek to win the 
love of all, and the persons whose love I most 
covet are those with rich souls, and I do not care 
whether their pockets are rich or not. I there- 
fore desire that tokens of affection shall be meas- 
ured out to me in a coin that is common to rich 
and poor alike. I do not want the poor man to 
feel that he is in such a matter at a disadvantage 
as compared with the rich, or that he must make 
up in servility and excessive show of reverence for 
what he lacks in money. 

" Still another reason why I desire no gifts is that 
I must preserve, not only my independence, but my 
reputation for independence. It is charged upon 
the ministry very often that it has allowed itself to 
become the paid advocate of the moneyed classes, 
so that it is not free to take a disinterested part 
in the solution of certain great social problems. 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxxix 

Even if the charge is unfounded, it is injurious 
to the influence of the ministry. A man cannot 
afford thus to throw away his influence. If he has 
received gifts he is suspected and his words are 
discounted, whatever side of a controversy he may 
take." 

Indeed, he was a man with a rare sense of care- 
fulness and even punctiliousness in business honor 
and method. It is the written testimony of the 
treasurer of Princeton College that he was of 
" prompt business habits in regard to money mat- 
ters, and indeed in all relations, while student and 
instructor. I am sorry to say that such prompt- 
ness and strict integrity does not always character- 
ize the student life, and I take the more pleasure 
in certifying that he was a somewhat exceptional 
character in this respect." Similar testimony is 
at hand from Ludlow : " His word is as good as 
a bond can be. He gave evidence of so keen a 
sense of right in mere secular matters as to gain 
unlimited confidence in his integrity in all his 
affairs of life." 

He never once accepted hundreds of offers by 
merchants of " ten per cent reduction to ministers." 
Nor could he ever be induced to accept clergy- 
men's half -fare privileges on railroads. It is not 
for his biographer to discuss the question of the 
correctness of these positions ; they are simply 
recorded here. They show at least a tremendous 
conscientiousness carried out at no small cost of 



xl BIOGRAPHICAL IXTRODUCTIOX. 

sacrifice. The following letter indicates a phase 
of the same spirit : — 

North Ada^is, September 9, 1893. 

My dear Brethren of the Trustees : — I 
do not think that while things are in their present 
state I can continue to preach the gospel of unsel- 
fishness while I draw a full salary. I therefore 
return to you one half of my month's salary, and 
will continue to do that each month until times 
are better. 

I do not see how I can get through on these 
arrangements, for I have no luxuries to cut off, 
and have been spending it all on current expenses 
except what I pay for a moderate insurance. But 
other people are in the same difficulty, and I do 
not see why I should be free from the common lot. 
Yours sincerely, 

John P. Coyle. 

This letter is a fair picture of the character of 
the man. It was no exceptional act ; he was doing 
that sort of thing all his life. He is not the 
only man or only minister who, during the recent 
hard times, voluntarily reduced his salary, though 
I do not know of any one who went so far as to 
bisect it. Such an act could be done from dema- 
gogic motives, but Mr. Coyle could not do it so. 
Not unlikely had the thought of the possibility of 
such an interpretation entered his mind the horror 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xli 

of it would have prevented the action. The Trus- 
tees did not accept the suggestion. 

About this time an appropriate recognition of 
his ability as student, thinker, preacher, and pastor 
came to him from Williams College, within five 
miles of which he had been doing his work for 
half a dozen years. At their centennial anniver- 
sary in October, 1893, the degree of Doctor of 
Divinity was conferred upon him. 

There are few things in the last two years of 
his life that interested him more* than some special 
work in which his name is associated with Iowa 
College. After Rev. Dr. George D. Herron came 
to the professorship of Applied Christianity in 
Iowa College in 1893, knowing these two men, I 
was anxious to have them know each other. An 
introduction was all that was necessary to interest 
them in each other in a way and to a degree that 
I have rarely seen among men. Mr. Coyle was 
for two years a member of the " Retreat " which, 
at the invitation of Dr. Herron, has been held in 
Grinnell for four years. His coming to this com- 
pany of men was a large contribution in the ele- 
ments of intellect, spirit, power, and fellowship, as 
in the other associations in New York city and 
New Jersey mentioned earlier. He was accorded 
almost immediately and perfectly naturally a fore- 
most position in every respect. There are some 
experiences connected with this fellowship that are 
too sacred for any public press. They must abide 



xlii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

among the holiest memories of the few who passed 
through them with him. 

In this department of Applied Christianity, and 
in that for which it stands in the college and in its 
wider work and influence, there was probably no 
man outside of the immediate college circles so 
much interested as he ; indeed, even that limitation 
might perhaps be removed. His sympathy was 
intense and profound, and expressed in every possi- 
ble way. He was one of the most profoundly 
formative influences in giving Mr. Herron confi- 
dence to go on with the work he had begun. He 
gave the first series of " Rand Lectures." This 
lectureship, established by Mrs. E. D. Rand, 
provides for an annual course of lectures in con- 
nection with the department of Applied Chris- 
tianity, which are afterward to be published in 
book form. Mr. Coyle's course was delivered in the 
college in the winter of 1893-94, and again in con- 
nection with the " School of the Kingdom," held 
in Grinnell in July, 1894. His topic was the 
" Holy Ghost the Socializes " These lectures have 
been recently published under the title " The Spirit 
in Literature and Life." The book is the product 
of thought which had been ripening for at least 
ten years. Mr. Coyle presented a brief paper 
containing the germ of the treatise to a little com- 
pany of ministers in the pastor's study of the 
Jersey City Tabernacle, about 1884 or 1885. But 
for the necessity of completing that most valuable 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xliii 

study, forced upon him by his having accepted the 
invitation to give these lectures at Iowa College, 
this maturest expression of his mind would proba- 
bly not be preserved for us. 

This word from one of our number, Rev. 
Thomas C. Hall, I think fittingly expresses our 
thought of him : — 

" The impression he made upon me was of a 
man of exceedingly sweet spirit and very remark- 
able intellectual power. His thought was in the 
realms less familiar to the English reader than 
they are to the German transcendental philosopher, 
but his power of intellectual analysis was remark- 
ably united to a certain power of broad generaliza- 
tion rarely found in such combination. There was 
a certain picturesque quality to his thought that 
well fitted him for a place as poet philosopher had 
God spared him longer to us." 

During the North Adams pastorate there was 
close fellowship between Mr. Coyle and Professor 
John Bascom, of Williams College. 

Professor Bascom says : — 

" Dr. Coyle possessed an original, fruitful, and 
independent mind. But that which endeared him 
most to men was a singular and beneficent equi- 
poise between a keenly speculative and an ear- 
nestly practical temper. While the most thought- 
ful found occasion for activity in his discourses, 
the less thoughtful felt his presence to be encour- 
aging, comforting, stimulating. The common 



xliv BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

people knew him gladly. On them rested the 
heaviest shadow in his early death. I shall always 
cherish his memory as of one whom it was good to 
be with." 

Eev. B. Fay Mills writes : — 

" I with others owe him a debt for his breadth 
and height and length and depth. He was one of 
the most symmetrical men I have known. I am 
glad to believe that he can still work with us for 
the manifestation of the redemption of the earth." 

Mr. Herron contributes this testimony : — 

" Take Coyle all in all, I can sum up my thought 
in saying that he is the most Messianic man I have 
ever known. During a trjdng period of his pastor- 
ate, I was with him almost night and day for two 
weeks. Nothing human I have seen is at once so 
marvelous and fruitful to me as the unconscious and 
simple Christliness of his life. With a Samson in- 
tellect he combined the deepest and most unaffected 
humility and a kindness towards sinners and suf- 
ferers that seemed to make his life one great heart- 
ache. It is very difficult for me to think of him 
as other than a living presence. His immense and 
anxious love seems alwaj^s personal and at hand, 
teaching me and judging me." 

During the last two or three years of his life 
many invitations came to him to strong positions 
in college-work. He was sought for the presi- 
dency of more than one institution of learning of 
high grade. Strong churches endeavored to toll 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xlv 

liini away from his North Adams work. The call 
to Denver was, however, the first successful one. 
There seemed to be an opportunity there for 
leadership in the civic influence of a strong church 
in a young, rapidly growing municipality that of- 
fered to a man of his spirit strategic opportunity. 
It seemed an ideal union between church and min- 
ister, and there was promise that the next decade 
might see work nothing less than magnificent for 
the Church and Kingdom. He was just ready to 
fling his life, with the abandonment of redeeming 
self-sacrifice, into the great, uneasy, materialistic, 
spiritually crude city under the mountains there 
waiting to be awakened to higher civic life. 

The work began most auspiciously in the three 
months of his pastorate. He was already winning 
a foremost position of real power in the whole com- 
munity. There is wide testimony to the strength 
of his influence, which had already begun to be de- 
veloped. Speaking after the manner of men but 
reverently, it seems to us as if the Lord were very 
prodigal of great resources of power among men 
that this work should be cut off before it had f airly 
begun. But we do not know enough to make it 
wise to utter such a sentiment. 

Mr. Nathan B. Coy, chairman of the committee 
to secure a new pastor, writes as follows : — 

" Dr. Coyle's short career here was not in vain ; 
the influence of it will never be lost. He has left 
a lasting impression upon the people. No death 



xlvi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

in this community lias come with so great a shock 
or created so profound regret. . . . His name has 
been so familiarly and favorably known during the 
brief three months of his ministry that his death 
came as a personal loss to all. Men who had never 
seen him or heard him preach, but had through 
his printed discourses and addresses become ac- 
quainted with his beautiful spirit and catholic 
thought, met on the street to exchange words of 
regret and to mingle tears of genuine sorrow. A 
higher standard of living exists among us from his 
influence." 

Mr. Coyle was richly endowed with many of 
the qualities which are universally recognized to 
be characteristic of genuine greatness. He was 
always a modest man, and he was never given to 
pushing himself forward, but rather the reverse. 
As usual in such cases, hosts of friends endeavored 
to give him prominence for the sake of the real 
power of leadership that was in him. He printed 
and used in his own Sunday-school a " Christian 
Catechism," as he called it, " On the Historical 
Plan." His name does not appear on the pam- 
phlet ; the title-page states simply that it is " by the 
Pastor." The little brochure is a fascinating pic- 
ture of the stalwart method which he wrought out 
with such profound historical and philosophical 
insight in the Rand Lectures. It is a fine exhibi- 
tion of the best spirit and method in the modern 
interpretation of Jesus. 



BIOGBAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xlvii 

A striking example of his modesty was shown 
in connection with a communion service at the 
close of the " Retreat " in Grinnell in 1894. Hav- 
ing been requested to administer the wine at that 
service, only with extreme reluctance did he do so, 
and then on the condition that he should make an 
explanation of his conception of his own unworthi- 
ness to do it. He said that he had been realizing 
profoundly during the Retreat days how sinfully 
proud he was, and it had humiliated him to such 
an extent that he shrank from even the little 
appearance of prominence which the choice of 
those present had thrust upon him in asking him 
to assume the position of spiritual teacher in con- 
nection with that service. " Why," said he, " I 
shall even be proud of this confession before I 
have done with it." It was almost pathetically 
humorous, but impressively sincere. 

Another characteristic of him was that he was 
to a rare degree an ever-growing man. The doors 
of his spirit were always and in all directions open 
wide. So fresh air seemed about his thoughts and 
soul. There was another special fact in which 
this growth was very marked in the last half-dozen 
years of his life. His mind was naturally mathe- 
matical and metaphysical. The deftness with 
which his words in pulpit and in common utter- 
ances moved amid the profoundest philosophical 
terms made him seem sometimes too far ahead of 
those whom he sought to teach. It was undoubt- 



xlviii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

edly in some cases a hindrance to the best effec- 
tiveness of his preaching. But in the later years 
he with conscious intent acquired a simpler, more 
direct and popular style. It seemed as if he were 
just getting ready to bring to bear his profound 
resources in perfectly apprehensible terms upon 
the actual problems of human society. This char- 
acteristic of a perpetual growth in him made him 
of course keenly alive to modern social movements 
in the church and out. The socializing and demo- 
cratizing of industry commanded much of his time 
and strength in the latter years. He lived in the 
midst of an industrial community. He interested 
himself intelligently, sympathetically, and help- 
fully in the labor troubles that were all about him. 
He was fully sympathetic with both the employee 
and the employer. While sternly impatient of 
any cold-blooded indifference or tyranny, he was 
yet cordially appreciative of the honest endeavor 
of the employers for a better status. Nevertheless 
it is not improbable that his intensest sympa- 
thy went out toward the poor. They were his own 
class. He knew them well. It is impossible that 
any man, however humble, could feel that Mr. 
Coyle was attempting to patronize him. More 
than once his services were sought as arbitrator, 
capitalist and laborer having equal confidence in 
his spirit of entire fairness. One incident I recall. 
I was his guest for a day a few months before he 
died. We were driving in the afternoon out to a 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xlix 

neighboring factory settlement. A small strike 
was in progress, and a mill was shut down. Sud- 
denly he pulled up his horse, saying, " Wait a 
moment ; I must go in here and see the superin- 
tendent." When he came back, after a few mo- 
ments, he was full of expressions of sympathy for 
the employer, who was in honest perplexity, want- 
ing to do his duty, both by the owners and the 
men. A little farther on he drew up again and 
said, " Here is where one of the men lives, with 
a large family to support." He was gone a little 
longer there, and there were tears in his eyes when 
he came back. He said : " There is real poverty 
there, and they can hardly get enough to eat, but 
yet the man believes that they are making an hon- 
est fight for righteousness. He says he can stand 
it all right himself, but it is hard to ask the wife 
and bairns to suffer with him in the good cause." 
There seemed to be something very high about 
that, the calling to offer sympathy, not to the one 
party, but to both. Neither thought the less of 
that sympathy, because each knew it freely accorded 
to the other. 

His presence always bore the air of the great 
character-factors of honesty, frankness, truthful- 
ness, genuineness, reality. His was one of those 
transparent lives. We who knew him always felt 
that we were getting his actual and best thought 
even in the lightest conversation. There was never 
anything to conceal. We felt that nothing repel- 



1 BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

lent would be discovered if his body and spirit 
could have been made of glass. Every one who 
knew him enough to be to a little extent acquainted 
with him must have felt that there was unflinch- 
ing courage in him. There were Spartan qualities 
in this courage which made him one to lean on. 
He could give himself wholly to a great cause, as 
indeed he did, — the cause of God and Truth and 
Right. He was one of the most unpurchasable of 
men. No subtle temptation of that sort, however 
indirect, could ever even touch him. 

He was naturally of a conservative tempera- 
ment. The way he clung to the old Athanasian 
creed was a marvel to men who did not understand 
this element of his nature. He was ever loyal to 
the old and the past : so true a soul could not be 
otherwise. At the same time he was one of the 
most radical and progressive of men, as indeed all 
genuine conservatism is. For that is not genuine 
conservatism which would drag along all the lum- 
ber of the past, but only that is righteously con- 
servative which, rejecting what is worthless, builds 
therefore the more solidly because more compactly 
upon that which has already been achieved. In 
him there was a brilliant synthesis of conservatism 
and progressiveism. He knew well how to mass 
the results of history to hurl them against all bar- 
riers to the progress for the purpose of which this 
history had been wrought out. 

The perfect freedom and unconventionality of 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. ii 

his thought and expression naturally caused him 
to be much misunderstood by the conventional and 
incompetent. This brought about much unkindly 
criticism and sometimes what seemed to be v*ery 
unfraternal treatment by some of his brother min- 
isters. But in most cases longer acquaintance 
removed any such hostilities. This was markedly 
true in North Adams. Let this letter from Rev. 
Francis H. Rowley, who now writes from Oak 
Park, Illinois, be a piece of t}^pical testimony touch- 
ing this point : — 

..." I was for eight years the pastor of the 
North Adams Baptist Church, and for six years 
Mr. Coyle's neighbor. The last three years of the 
six we came very close together in a friendship 
that was to me most helpful and inspiring. Mr. 
Coyle came to North Adams a man at least twenty- 
five years ahead of his time. Some hundreds of 
years, perhaps, ahead of many preachers, and in 
his views of Christian truth so far ahead of me 
at the time, that for some years I only followed 
afar off. Gradually I caught up. When once a 
man breaks with his systematic theology he is apt 
to move with some speed. . . . 

" Nothing in Mr. Coyle's character ever testified 
so strongly to his inherent nobility and greatness 
as his willingness to sacrifice present success and 
to go without men's praise in his loyalty to what 
he conceived to be the truth. For years we all 
called him a heretic, said that he was destroying 



lii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

men's faith in the Bible, and gave him scarcely a 
word of cheer. He saw the rest of us carrying 
often the crowd with us, winning the popular ap- 
plause, while he kept on preaching to the more 
thoughtful, often conscious that many of his own 
congregation were greatly disturbed at his teach- 
ings, — but so true was he to the truth as he saw 
it that he dared to wait and trust the future to 
vindicate his course. That courage to bide his 
time, to wait for the coming years to bring his 
reward, to stem the tide of criticism and censure 
patiently, lovingly, bravely, assured that his cause 
was just and right — was one of the things in him 
that revealed his inmost character. He ' sought a 
city.' He seemed to say, ' It 's all right ; I can 
seem to be a pilgrim and a stranger among my 
brethren, if need be, for the city I seek hath foun- 
dations.' I can see now how he saw that Chris- 
tianity's future among the more intelligent of 
his fellows depended upon the acceptance of the 
larger, more scientific views of Christian truth 
that he had found. Instead of driving men into 
infidelity, he has saved many a man from losing 
his faith altogether. 

" This all men who knew him confessed, no 
matter how much they disagreed with him in 
theology, — that he lived the Christ-life. Always, 
everywhere, Christ was his Lord and Master. 
The spirit of Jesus possessed him. The man who 
startled many of us by his strange and apparently 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. liii 

heretical and dangerous teaching to-day, would be 
found to-morrow living Christ among the poor and 
suffering of his parish or the town. One old Irish 
woman said, at his funeral, ' In many a dark 
hour he was my only friend.' Scores of such 
cases might be found. He was a strong, original 
thinker, but his heart was overflowing witli love 
and sympathy to all who were oppressed or unfor- 
tunate. Only a man whose faith was stayed on 
God could have walked so many years alone, doing 
his work and finding his reward, not in apparent 
success, but in spite of what men called failure, 
— in the assurance that he was doing the right. I 
never saw a man more willing to forfeit, if need be, 
the honor of his friends, or to incur the deep cen- 
sure of his critics when he heard the voice of duty. 

" I came not only to honor him with all my 
heart, but to love him as one of the noblest and 
best of men." 

It is not to be wondered at that the Denver 
people sought him earnestly, if many such estimates 
as the above reached their committee. Concerning 
some of these Mr. Coyle wrote to Mr. Coy August 
13, 1894 : " Your letter which came this after- 
noon simply overwhelms me, and all I can do at 
present is to acknowledge its receipt. My friends 
seem to have loved me in rather hysterical fashion 
and said extravagant things about me. I shall 
spend the rest of my days trying to live up to their 
specifications." 



liv BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

The following letter is a beautiful testimony to 
the way Mr. Coyle bound friends to himself in 
the bonds of fellowship on high altitudes of life. 
It is from Rev. Preston Barr, a minister of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in Tacoma, Wash- 
ington, a friend since college days. Let this word 
stand for that which many would, and indeed in 
varying forms do, testify : — 

" I have lost the friend of my life who stood 
closest to me in intellectual and moral sympathy. 
No man whom I have ever known has possessed 
anything approaching to his power of stimulus in 
the domain of intellect and character. The moral 
ideal stood over his life like the noonday sun in 
brightness and power, not only filling his mental 
eye with the clear light and vision of truth, but 
also inspiring his life with the energy and warmth 
of a divine enthusiasm. This was the force that 
impelled him in his life of intense activity. The 
sphere of active duty and service was the very ele- 
ment and joy of his being. I cannot imagine him 
as thinking of duty in the light of self-sacrifice, but 
always as delightful and necessary self-gratifica- 
tion. Nor could I ever think of him as departing 
this life otherwise than at the post of duty in the 
thick of the fight." 

There was in him a very rich vein of humor. 
The w T hole man was broad awake. Pew, indeed, 
were the people who could converse with him, but 
that his mind would run alons: ahead of the 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. lv 

speaker. His part in the conversation often con- 
tained, of course, with no rude intention on his 
part, a neater statement of his interlocutor's re- 
marks or opinions than the original. I doubt if 
any one ever saw him appear to hesitate for an 
answer to an argument, or for a reply to an ex- 
pressed or implied question. It almost seemed as 
if the answer had anticipated the question in his 
mind. He was an appreciative listener. His keen 
enjoyment of the bright and even humorous side 
of events made him one of the most genial of com- 
panions. It is hard to conceive that any one 
could experience a tiresome moment in his pres- 
ence. He was abundantly endowed with vivacity 
and quick wit. There have been few men more 
capable of brilliant instantaneous repartee, even 
amid discussions of the profoundest themes and 
under most exacting circumstances. On several 
occasions when under " examination " in theologi- 
cal matters, sharp thrusts of questions were parried 
by wit keen enough to include complete answer, 
good natured enough to preclude the charge of 
irrelevant impertinence, fair and generous enough 
to win the case for him among the fair minded 
and the capable. 

However sharply opposed or even attacked, there 
was no bitter retort, nor indeed evidence of the 
least unkindly feeling. He was one of the most 
remarkable men in this respect. There was a 
power in him to rise with utmost geniality of good 



Ivi BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

nature clean above easy retaliation even into the 
atmosphere of a sweet Christian spirit, and it was 
yet done so naturally and easily that it seemed 
to cost no effort, but just to be the nature of 
the man. For instance, here is a word from the 
last sermon he ever preached. There was some 
sharp difference of opinion raised at his installing 
council in Denver. While the majority were with 
him, one or two felt so strongly as to advocate 
disfellowshiping the First Congregational Church 
with its pastor. So much had been said and 
printed that Mr. Coyle very reluctantly gave this 
Sunday morning sermon, which he little thought 
would be his last on earth, to some direct and per- 
sonal statements concerning this council and its 
issues. In the midst of them occur these words : — 
" The only criticism of me in print which is 
worthy of consideration is that of the honored 

pastor of the church, whom I love, and with 

whom I have some earnest and unusual agreement. 
I agree with him, as I know many of you do not, 
that doctrine is a matter of great importance, and 
that the maintenance of the truth is not too dearly 
paid for by the temporary suspension of fellow- 
ship. He represents the strength of the small 
minority that stood against me in the council. 
By no fault of his, his opinion, rather than that 
of the majority, was telegraphed East, where my 
friends and yours have no other means of informa- 
tion. My friends, as already I have evidence, do 
not believe it ; but yours are more likely to. 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. lvii 

" I have no occasion to say a word against the 

action of the pastor of the church. He has 

done not only what he had a right to do, but 
what from his point of view was his plain duty, 
and he has done it in a sweet and manly Chris- 
tian way. Our personal friendship will not be 
interrupted for a moment by it. I do not expect 
he will ever believe I am quite right, but I do 
confidently wait the time when he will admit that 
I am not outside the limits of tolerance." 

I shall venture to make room for generous quo- 
tation from this remarkable utterance, in which 
the self -revelation of some of the best things in 
the man comes out in clear light. 

Since expressing the above judgment, I am glad 
to find it shared by another, Rev. Dr. John H. 
Denison, of Williamstown, Massachusetts, who in 
a letter to a friend says : — 

" I have just been reading with great interest 
and delight Mr. Coyle's last sermon as reported 
in the North Adams paper. It seems to me a 
noble Christian utterance, based on broad scholar- 
ship, and profoundly true and prophetic. . . . 

" I rejoice that God led him to make that last 
clear and ringing testimony. It is precious as 
his heart's blood, and almost moves me to tears. 
It will stand as the epitome of his life. All else 
that he said or did is insignificant compared with 
this last. It is not the detail but the outcome 
that the world is concerned with." 



lviii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

To continue the quotation from the sermon : — - 
" Two things I ask you to believe of me : that 
I do not seek notoriety, and that I shall not at- 
tempt in a destructive spirit to pull down the 
established order. The notoriety hunters will not 
follow me long. I have no use for that kind of 
constituency. I can do it no good, and have 
neither the disposition nor the ability to amuse. 
As to the social order, I will support it, — not as 
a slave or a parasite, but as an independent mem- 
ber of it, conscious of earning all I get from it, 
and with a stake in its stability on behalf of my 
loved ones. I shall not cease to seek to reform 
it. My criticism of it will be free, but neither 
acrimonious nor unsympathetic. I am ready now, 
as until now I was not, to build my life into this 
church and this city. How many persons I may 
have alienated I do not know. But I have taken 
little comfort in my popularity, because I knew 
that the crisis would surely some day come. I 
am glad it is over. My ambition is to remain 
and see a generation of children grow up under 
my pastoral oversight. These children must re- 
spect me, my character, my intelligence, and my 
courage. Had I been a coward to avoid unpopu- 
larity, though no one knew it but myself, it would 
have so affected my bearing that the divine in- 
stinct of the boy would have detected something 
despicable, and I could never have been to your 
boys the pastor I have an ambition to be. 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. lix 

" Now I have done with this. I do not expect 
to be understood at present. The most painful 
thing to me has been the necessity for trying to 
hasten an understanding; and that has been for 
your sakes and not for my own. 

" We pass now to a subject concerning which I 
speak without the least reluctance — my beliefs. 
I have beliefs in which I so rejoice that the 
thought of them fairly makes me bound from the 
floor ; and I am consumed with impatience until 
I can impart the same joy of faith to you. 
These beliefs are neither heretical nor eccen- 
tric. There are elements of originality in them, 
as in the beliefs of all thinking men, but neither 
in substance nor in form do they differ greatly 
from those of a large and growing body of min- 
isters in all denominations. . . . 

" I will only speak of the two of his charges 
which are pivotal. He is mistaken in thinking 
that I do not sufficiently exalt the Scripture. On 
the contrary, my doctrine of the Scripture does it 
more honor than the current one. I hold in sub- 
stance to the Lutheran doctrine cast in modern 
mould, and which compares with the current view 
as life compares with mechanism. Of this, how- 
ever, I will say no more at present." . . . 

At another time he spoke thus on the same 
subject : — 

" Instead of ' infallible rule of faith and prac- 
tice,' let us substitute 'inexhaustible source of 



lx BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

spiritual truth and power.' The first is passive 
and rabbinical, belonging to the terminology of 
the scribes, who always slew the prophets or men 
of power. The second is active and dynamical. 
... If charges of heresy upon the doctrine of 
Scripture are afloat and must lodge somewhere, 
let them lodge where they belong, upon those who 
give to the Bible the equivalent of divine honor, 
which it ought not to have, and empty it of the 
divine power which it possesses, saying, ' Touch it 
not lest ye die,' when its virtue is in its touch." 
Mr. Coyle's last sermon continues : — 
" We come now to the point about which I am 
so glad to speak that the opportunity to do so re- 
pays me for the pain of the occasion, — the God- 
head of Jesus. I should have preached upon that 
to-day in any case. Those who accuse me of deny- 
ing the deity of Jesus forget to reckon that there 
may be more than two possible attitudes, namely, 
that which they occup}^, and that which they im- 
agine to be mine. I respect both of these positions. 
They were both occupied to good advantage in 
their day. But I do not and never did or could 
hold the one they think I do. It was out of date 
before my day. When I awoke from ' dogmatic 
slumber ' I was fortunate enough to awake in thor- 
oughly modern atmosphere. I call you to witness 
that I have preached the deity of Jesus incessantly 
since I have been among you, and that I have 
scarcely announced a hymn that was not an ascrip- 



BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. lxi 

tion to him. The deification of Jesus is not a 
theorem to be maintained; it is a fact of con- 
temporary history to account for and to adjust 
one's self to, that Jesus is de facto God. He 
is enthroned at the right hand of the Supreme 
Majesty, and you can no more talk him up or 
down than you can talk the sun into or out of 
the firmament. I shall not go out of my way to 
prove the divinity of Jesus to any one. Whoever 
desires it I will leave to the logic of events. 
Neither am I afraid that any one will dethrone 
Jesus by investigating him. I would as soon think 
of the geologist demolishing Pike's Peak with his 
hammer. I have myself an absorbing interest in 
making as complete a study as possible of the 
nature of that divinity, and of the course of his- 
tory by which the Son of Mary was enthroned 
beside the Ineffable ; and since I was born with 
the hunger, not only to receive, but to impart know- 
ledge, I count myself among the most favored of 
men, because I have the opportunity, with suf- 
ficient leisure and unlimited freedom, not only to 
pursue, but to help others to pursue this whole- 
some, this saving truth. I am firmly convinced 
that nothing can make this beautiful city of Den- 
ver a city of God but a more universal and genuine 
knowledge of Jesus. 

" Loyalty to him is poverty stricken in its ex- 
pression for want of adequate and real knowledge 
concerning him. Hortatory discourse about him 



lxii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

has a frequent falsetto ring because it does not 
spring from or is not addressed to sufficient know- 
ledge. Of so much importance do I deem it that 
this city know Jesus as a basis for the solution of 
the issues of its life, that I shall turn to discuss cur- 
rent questions only occasionally and incidentally, 
as by way of paying my tax as a citizen for current 
expenses. These things, however, for the most 
part I shall leave for those who have not been 
called, as I think I have, to the high mission of 
interpreting Jesus. As soon as I have time to re- 
sume and complete the special preparation which 
was interrupted by my removal to Denver, I pro- 
pose to begin to speak systematically and exhaus- 
tively upon the life and person of Jesus. There 
is nothing else to preach about to-day. There is 
no question any longer of the divinity of Jesus. 
The philosophical revolution of the last quarter 
century has brought it about that what question 
there is is about the divinity of God. The days of 
deism are gone ; and those of philosophical theism, 
except as it crowns the worship of Jesus, are num- 
bered. No man hath at any time seen a God 
worthy of worship ; the only begotten Son, who is 
in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed Him. 
The curricula of our theological schools which are 
arranged with a view to making men believe in 
God the first year, and in Christ the second, will 
have to be set to grind the other way. The name 
of Jesus everywhere commands homage. Those 



BIOGBAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. lxiii 

who imagine they worship nothing actually wor- 
ship that name. The world idolizes Jesus. For 
once it has an idol the worship of which does not 
degrade or lead astray. The great discovery of 
this age is not electricity. It is Jesus. ' This 
recovery of the historical Christ,' as Dr. Fairbairn 
calls it, is the last and ripe fruit of the Renais- 
sance. It could not happen until the new histori- 
cal sense had developed a critical method and 
tested and perfected it in other departments. The 
first firm and constructive use of that method was 
by Niebuhr in his history of Rome. It is only 
now beginning to be employed for the recovery of 
Hebrew and early Christian history, but already 
it is yielding results richer than can be computed. 
We can never think again as we did, any more 
than we can travel with ox-carts. We are in the 
age of the spirit, and the spirit is life and action. 
The next score of years is to witness such an in- 
crease of knowledge concerning Jesus as will fitly 
crown the discoveries of the last score in material 
science. It is a glorious thing to be alive to-day 
— and the knowledge of bird is life." 

These last preached words of our beloved seem 
sent back to us by him, a clear beckoning testi- 
mony from that life upon which he has entered, 
the life whose richest part is larger " Knowledge 
of Him." 

George A. Gates. 



THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 



I. 

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 

AN ADVENT SERMON. 

The Lord is at hand. — Phil. iv. 5. 

Behold I stand at the door and knock. — Rev. iii. 20. 

To-day stands in the calendar of the Christian 
year as the first Sunday in Advent. That calen- 
dar, older than the divisions of Protestantism, 
older than Protestanism itself, older than the 
schism between Rome and Constantinople, belongs 
to all Christendom, which, dating its era from him, 
ought to divide its year also with reference to 
Jesus, who has been exalted to the right hand of 
Him who sits upon the circle of the heavens and 
rules the seasons. It is therefore rightly called 
not so much an ecclesiastical as a Christian calen- 
dar, as this is the Christian era. Between the 
church, as representing ecclesiastical dogmas and 
systems, and the personal empire of Jesus Christ 
the distinction must sometimes be emphasized. 



2 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

Facts indeed compel attention to it. A German 
student recently hired himself to work in a fac- 
tory, that he might learn the secret of tl^at social 
democracy which is so widespread among the 
workingmen of Germany. He reported that more 
universal and more significant than the political 
ideas and aims of these men were two things : a 
profound disbelief in the church and in Christian- 
ity, as represented by the church, and a profound 
faith in Jesus and admiration amounting to adora- 
tion of him, as the head man of the race. And this 
same thing is to a lesser extent coming to pass 
among us ; and at least it is not the worst that 
could happen, for the only thing which has become 
so identified with us as to be essential to the com- 
ing of the kingdom of God and man in this world 
is the personality of Jesus of Nazareth. Let all 
else go, so that men's minds continue to revolve 
with the years about Jesus, and the empire of re- 
demption will move on apace. 

We hear of the secularization of Christmas. 
God hasten the secularization of the whole year in 
similar fashion ! It is the substitution of a genu- 
ine for a false sanctity ; of sacredness for sacerdo- 
talism. When it has completed itself, we shall see 
the new Jerusalem come down from God out of 
heaven. The world has begun to look to Jesus, to 
seek to embody his spirit once a year, at the anni- 
versary of his birth. But let it follow him through 
the year. Let it listen to the Sermon on the Mount. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 6 

Let it stand with him at Bethsaida. Let it go out 
with him to Cesarea Philippi. Let it march be- 
hind him up the gorge from Jericho to Jerusalem 
amazed and silent, saying, " Let us go that we may 
die with him." Let it witness his simple yet elo- 
quent triumphal progress mingled with tears over 
the sinful, the apostate city. Let it sit down at 
the memorial supper. Let it watch with him in 
Gethsemane. Let it see the traitor's kiss. Let it 
follow into the hall of Caiaphas, and stand with 
the crowd outside the tribunal of Pilate. Let it 
travel the Via Dolorosa, and stand by the cross 
and hear the prayer, " Father, forgive them ; for 
they know not what they do." Let it view the 
empty tomb, and celebrate the Easter gladness 
over him whose relation to the world, whatever 
it may be, has transcended that of a mere posthu- 
mous influence. Let the breath of spring come 
to it with pentecostal grace, and the vision of a 
Triune Glory open to it as the scales fall from 
its eyes ; and then let it ripen through the rest of 
the year as through the summer which this sun of 
righteousness has brought, and by the time it has 
waked up to the anticipation of another Christmas 
season will it not also, if it has improved its op- 
portunity, find for that new Christmas a new 
meaning ? 

It should be the effort of us all to pursue some 
such course as this, to seek to learn of Jesus in the 
spirit of Jesus himself, to strip away such over- 



4 THE IMPERIAL CUBIST. 

growths of pious but often discredited opinion as 
have concealed him. Each year we should seek to 
come around to the starting-place with some new 
treasure. And this is about the starting-place. 
Here we begin to prepare for the Christmas sea- 
son. The distinctive characteristic of this season 
is that it has come within the sphere of influence 
of Christmas. As the old almanac w r ould say, 
" At about this time begin to look out for Christ- 
mas gifts." And children and elders alike are 
prompt to take the advice. Find out what is up- 
permost in any child's mind, and it is probably 
Christmas. Learn what parents are thinking of, 
and it is probably how to make the most of Christ- 
mas. The shop counters are already beginning 
to groan and the clerks to groan with them. If 
Birnam Wood be not come to Dunsinane, the 
young green forests have already for weeks been 
traveling in procession through our street on their 
way* to city homes. Christmas is not far off ; and 
the new year begins with Christmas. 

But this coming Christmas cannot be last year's 
Christmas. It is the Confucian, not the Christian, 
era, whose years are circles. The years of Jesus 
are spiral curves like the whorls of a climbing mil- 
lennium plant. His is the era, not of machinery, 
but of life. We do not come around to where we 
started from. A year with Jesus cannot leave us 
where it found us. And it is to this fact that this 
season ought especially to compel attention. This 



THE FIB ST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 

Advent season, therefore, has a double anticipa- 
tion. It anticipates both the coming again of the 
Christmas season and the fulfillment of that phase 
of which last Christmas was the beginning. 
Among the early disciples of Jesus, I think it was 
this latter anticipation which was most active. 
They lived continually under the sense of an in- 
complete era. Something was impending which 
was sure to happen some day, and might happen 
any day. This expectation they had from plain 
intimations of Jesus, whose own superb faith in his 
personal relationship to the world took the form 
of an anticipation of a second appearance. And 
this second appearance of Jesus was seen, both by 
himself and by them, to be a logical consequence 
of the place which he had won in their hearts, and 
was winning in the world. Each year as they 
rehearsed at length the events of his life and death 
and resurrection, and the descent of his spirit, and 
the starting in its power of his redemptive move- 
ment, they realized more and more that something 
was wanting to complete the cycle, so that their 
anticipation of the recurrence of the anniversary 
of his birth was swallowed up in the larger antici- 
pation of his return in glory. And this season, 
therefore, became not so much the herald of Christ- 
mas as the herald of the second coming of the 
Christ, the second Christmas. This expectation 
has always held captive the minds of those who 
have fixed their loyalty to Jesus. The immeas- 



6 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

urable possibilities of the movement which he 
launched, compared with its actual visible achieve- 
ment, have made men feel that somewhere must 
be forming a reservoir of spiritual force which 
may at any moment revolutionize the world. 
The officials of the United States Geological Sur- 
vey declare that the Wasatch Mountain range, 
which overhangs Salt Lake City, is gradually ris- 
ing, and that the movement is registered, in its 
relation to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, by 
a series of earthquakes which occur when the 
strain at any place becomes too great to endure 
longer, and a fracture of the rock occurs, forming 
long precipitous " faults " which are only gradu- 
ally obliterated by climatic influences. And they 
have warned the people of Salt Lake City that 
they are living on the spot where the next earth- 
quake is now already overdue, so that they need 
not be surprised at a terrible convulsion which, 
when it does come, will come without an instant's 
warning. And the longer it is delayed the more 
awful it will be, and the more sudden. It may 
not occur in five hundred years, but it may occur 
to-day ; and no argument for continued delay can 
be made from past delay. This is the prediction, 
not of charlatans, but of plain matter of fact scien- 
tific students, who are experts in this department 
of knowledge. 

Speaking as one whom circumstances and spe- 
cial pursuits have made something of an expert in 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. ( 

the science of spiritual movements and potencies, 
I here declare that a similar movement has been 
going on, until so much amassed Christ-energy is 
in existence, in a form capable of instantaneous 
transformation from potential to actual, that, 
scientifically speaking, there is enough tension to 
produce such a moral and spiritual convulsion be- 
tween now and Christmas as history has never 
seen, though poets and prophets have always 
dreamed of it. Neither is any improbability to 
be argued from the fact that it has not come be- 
fore. It is certain to happen some time, and the 
longer it is delayed the greater becomes the strain, 
and hence the more likely it is to be of sudden and 
unexpected occurrence. I reiterate it, — speaking 
as a scientific student on the basis of a knowledge 
of contemporary history, and not as a fanatic or an 
ignorant twister of texts, — that this is to be ex- 
pected. And I invite attention to the fact that 
within the past few years this same thing has 
received more frequent utterance from the mouths 
of sober and weighty witnesses than in all recent 
times. It is not long since Dr. Dale, of Birming- 
ham, one of the leading ministers and public men 
of England, said that he felt assured that " there 
would shortly be such a display of the Saviour's 
power through the church upon the world outside 
as had not been seen since the day of Pentecost." 
The new heavens and the new earth may come 
convulsively and at once, and the Lord descend 



8 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

from heaven with a shout. And the next Christ- 
mas may see it. God hasten it in his day ! 

Did I say, God hasten his day ? "Who are ye 
that desire the day of the Lord ? TVho am I that 
desire it ? " The day of the Lord shall be dark- 
ness and not light." Ah, it is a great and terrible 
day when the sun shall be turned into darkness 
and the moon into blood. It will be a day of judg- 
ment and heart searching. It will be a day of 
decision, instant decision, with no more time for 
procrastination. It is not for me to threaten, but 
it is my duty to warn solemnly that this impend- 
ing Christ-crisis is one which, when it comes, is to 
be dreaded as well as hoped for. The truth is 
that Jesus is not only the world's Saviour, but we 
believe that he is to be its Judo;e. We forget that 
in these days; we forget that the Christ-move- 
ment is one which concerns men as free moral 
agents, responsible for what they do, and the choices 
which they make or neglect to make. Though the 
dignity of manhood has been vindicated through 
the deification of a man, through the revelation of 
the divine son ship of humanity, we forget that 
with this dignity comes the possibility of irretriev- 
able ruin as well as of eternal salvation and suc- 
cess. Such a possibility is inseparable from the 
new idea of the worth of manhood. The dogma 
of universal salvation is the counterpart, as it was 
the outgrowth, of the old hyper-Calvinism, which 
affirmed that God, out of his eternal purpose and 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 9 

for the mere good pleasure of his will, chose some 
to everlasting life, and passed by others, thus 
dooming them to death. As against this the early 
Universalists not unaptly declared that, if the 
question of salvation was determined solely by the 
will of God, then it was incredible that any should 
be lost. That is so, and if we were shut up to 
that alternative we must be Universalists. But 
not being so shut up, we say that God is deter- 
mined because of his love to save all men ; but we 
cannot say that God can save all men. We are 
the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what 
we shall be when we have worked out our destiny 
in either good or ill. The possibility of eternal 
success involves that of awful failure. The issue, 
therefore, concerning the Christ-crisis is one of 
eternal life and eternal death. We must not 
belittle it. It is a crisis. 

But as we are accustomed to say that society is 
the individual writ large, so this crisis is equally 
for the individual and for society ; and though the 
social crisis may not come this year, the individual 
crisis may come to many, and will almost certainly 
come to some. And since I cannot speak at length 
of both, it is to the individual Christ-crisis I wish 
to call especial attention this morning. Every 
year is a critical year. And precisely the same 
crisis is never twice repeated. Since last Christ- 
mas a new issue has been preparing for each of us 
to meet. I have chosen these two texts because 



10 THE IMPEBIAL CHRIST. 

they together cover the ground, both as to the fact 
and the manner of the fact, of Jesus' relation to 
most of us. He is at hand, he is confronting us. 
And within the year he has been drawing nearer 
and nearer to many. They cannot begin another 
Christmas in anything like the same attitude with 
regard to him as that of last Christmas. His voice 
has become more audible. His claims upon them 
have become more urgent, his right to them has 
become more plain. The excuses which formerly 
expressed their unwillingness to admit him to their 
hearts have ceased to satisfy their consciences ; the 
intellectual obstacles and skepticisms have either 
been removed, or have shrunken in importance ; 
and their need of him has been revealed to them 
more than before. They can see more plainly 
than ever before how much better off they would 
have been had they yielded to him a year ago. They 
see how evil habit has been growing and gaining 
hold upon them, how the world has encroached upon 
them ; how much easier it is to put sacred things 
out of mind than it was a year ago ; how much 
more difficult to compel their attention to the 
things of Christ. As they look back, too, they 
see that probably never so often before in their 
lives have they resisted the spirit of Jesus as dur- 
ing the past year ; never so often and so strongly 
have they held on to self against him. And so 
they have been subjected to a strain which either 
gradually or suddenly is to place them in a new 
relation to him. 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 11 

This pressure of Jesus upon them is all the 
more irresistible in the long run because it is the 
pressure of love. Jesus comes to them with the 
importunity and the respectfulness of love. He 
does not force himself into their lives against their 
wills. He knows, and they know the moment that 
they come to consider it, that into their lives he 
must come, if they are to be redeemed ; that the 
whole sum of redeeming agency in the world has 
come to be represented by him ; that to shut him 
and that spirit which proceeds from him out of 
their lives is to shut out salvation, to empty life 
of all sacredness and prepare a vacuum which 
shall invite all evil. But he comes pleading to be 
admitted. The idea of soliciting love in the rela- 
tion of Jehovah to Israel took hold of the prophets 
very early. It was a very remarkable idea for 
their age, a great stroke of originality. They 
dwelt upon the thought of a God who loved his 
people so tenderly and generously that he could 
not do violence to their own free choice, and hence 
he plead with them for the privilege of blessing 
them. The early disciples, remembering the gen- 
tleness of Jesus and the manner in which his love 
had won its way into their own hearts, conceived 
of him as succeeding to this characteristic of the 
Jehovah of the prophets, and knocking at the door 
of all hearts. Thus the prime characteristic of 
that Christ-spirit, of which they were the first chan- 
nels, was its pleading love. It won men. Those 



12 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST r 

who were dominated by the spirit were dominated 
by love. The literature of the spirit was sur- 
charged with love. The hymns and ritual of the 
church were redolent of divine love. The atmos- 
phere of the meetings of the early Christians was 
an atmosphere of a love so divine that it simply 
puzzled their contemporaries. "When the time 
came for them to bear testimony with their blood, 
the marvel of the world was how a poo r crucified 
peasant could have so won the love of strong men 
and weak women that they would die for him. So 
love became a potency again in the world's his- 
tory, and pure love has been one of the chief 
history-makers ever since. 

Consider how much of your own life during the 
past year has been love-life : how much of what 
you have done has been won from you by love, — 
the love you bear to others, the love they bear to 
you, the love they bear to one another. Take an 
inventory of your possessions, of all that is of 
value to you, and eliminate from all these values 
that which love has in one way or other put into 
them. How much of them would be left ? Value, 
we all know, is subjective in its determination. 
And the most important, the fundamental sub- 
jectivity which gives value to things, which makes 
the values we all so much cherish, is love. And 
all this love, when once we come to analyze it, to 
find the secret of it, — all this is owing to Jesus, 
not only as having originated with him nearly two 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 13 

thousand years ago, but because the person of 
Jesus stands related to it daily. 

Therein lies the significance of the declaration 
with which the early apostles founded the kingdom 
of Jesus, — that his relation to that kingdom tran- 
scends that of a posthumous influence. As the 
theologians would say, he is not only a first cause, 
but also an immanent cause. Wherever in the 
course of history the personality of Jesus has been 
lost sight of, the love which he brought into life 
has been presently lost out of it again. We may 
call it mysterious, and try either to believe it or to 
disbelieve it because it is mysterious, according to 
our preconceptions ', but it is a fact of history that, 
wherever loyalty to Jesus cherishes him as though 
he were a present living person, there love enriches 
life ; and wherever it fails to do this, these riches 
take to themselves wings. In this historical fact 
is justified to us that instinctive feeling of the child 
and of the child-side of man, that the love of 
Jesus is soliciting us all the while, as truly as it 
yearned over and won the hearts of his first dis- 
ciples. All this transcendent part which love plays 
in life is the way in which the Master solicits per- 
mission to come into our lives. And during the 
past year this solicitation has gone on more and 
more with us all. Many have yielded, and have 
said that this source, this immanent present cause 
of all that makes life sweet, shall no longer be 
compelled to pour his blessings into their lives 



14 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

from outside themselves, but that he shall come in 
and occupy the throne which he deserves to occupy. 
Others have held him off, cherishing and enjoying 
the blessedness of life of which he is the creator, 
bathing deep in the fountains of pure affection, 
but postponing the day when the source of all pure 
affection shall be within them. 

And now another Christmas is drawing near, 
and we are again to join in the celebration of 
the birth of Jesus, for we all go as far as that ; 
that fact is the meaning of the secularization of 
Christmas. But we know that Jesus was born a 
King. The whole course of events which gave the 
world a Jewish Messiah was working toward a 
royal personage. He would not have been equal 
to the causes which produced him had he not been 
a King. If we celebrate his birth, we celebrate 
the birth of a King — of our King. This King 
grew to be a man, and as a man he has asked and 
is asking our loyalty and our love. If I celebrate 
his birth, how can I refuse to enthrone his man- 
hood ? Let me think of this. It is less than a 
month until that season which all the world, my- 
self included, has agreed to celebrate as sacred. If 
I, knowing his claims as distinctly as I do know 
them, hearing the pleadings of his love as I hear 
them, presume to go on and again celebrate his 
birth, does not my action, if this is all of it, par- 
take somewhat of a mockery ? Had I better not 
be frank like Herod, and send out and slay the 



THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DUTY. 15 

child Jesus, if I propose to pass through that sea- 
son again without admitting the man Jesus to rule 
over me? It is a serious question, this, how we 
who are still shutting Jesus out of our hearts are 
to approach this Christmas season. That it is a 
holy season the world has agreed ; that he who 
treads its courts should do so with clean feet, with 
innocent heart, with pure purpose, is a fair corol- 
lary. How qan I, who for a year have been con- 
sciously and purposely putting off the day when 
Jesus shall be let into my heart to rule there, — how 
can I without inconsistency so much as buy a toy 
for my child in the name of Christmas ? I glory 
in the so-called secularization of Christmas, be- 
cause, when the world keeps Christmas, it acknow- 
ledges the kingship of Jesus, it follows the star of 
Bethlehem, it puts itself where at length it can be 
brought to face the issue of the enthronement of 
Jesus in its heart. I am glad that you kept Christ- 
mas last year, because you therein confessed that 
Jesus was born King. But meanwhile you have 
seen him become a man, assume the authority of a 
King, rise in some sense at least, and ascend to the 
Father. You have felt the pleadings of his love, 
you have acknowledged that he ought to be en- 
throned in your life. Now I challenge you in his 
name : how dare you, until you have enthroned 
him, celebrate in any way another Christmas ? 

I do not ask you to hold my conception concern- 
ing Jesus, to affirm my dogma, or understand my 



16 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

philosophy. It is of small importance that one be 
nominally orthodox. I only ask that yon follow 
out the logic of your own attitude, that you so 
secularize the whole of your life, as you have secu- 
larized, by sanctifying, this part of it. 

Let us pray. 

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming 
didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way be- 
fore thee ; grant that the ministers and stewards 
of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make 
ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the diso- 
bedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy sec- 
ond coming to judge the world we may be found 
an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and 
reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever 
one God, world without end. Amen. 



II. 

THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 

AN ADVENT SERMON. 

Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming- of the Lord. 
Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the 
earth, being- patient over it, until it receive the early and latter 
rain. Be ye also patient ; stablish your hearts : for the coming 
of the Lord is at hand. — James v. 7, 8. 

But the end of all things is at hand : be ye therefore of sound 
mind, and be sober unto prayer : above all things being fervent in 
your love among yourselves ; for love covereth a multitude of 
sins : using hospitality one to another -without murmuring : accord- 
ing as each hath received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, 
as good stewards of the manifold grace of God ; if any man 
speaketh, speaking as it were oracles of God ; if any man minis- 
tereth, ministering as of the strength which God supplieth : that 
in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is 
the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen. — 1 Peter 
iv. 7-11. 

These two pieces of writing, so similar in sub- 
stance and in tone, were written by men of quite 
diverse temperaments and histories, concerning 
the event toward which the minds of all the early- 
disciples of Jesus were firmly set. To this expec- 
tation they had come by good right as his disci- 
ples ; for he had himself never wavered in his 
belief that he was about to stand to the world in a 



18 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

relationship in which no other man had ever stood, 
or could ever stand after him. It is a remarkable 
fact that, in spite of his strong conviction on this 
point, he was under no illusions as to his ignorance 
concerning the when or the how of its coming to 
pass. He made no pretension in that direction. 
Predictions founded upon insight into his own 
character and his relations to God and men he 
could make. Predictions dependent upon fore- 
knowledge of the accidents of history and of 
human caprice he was too sane to undertake. 
These things, he said, belonged to the Inscrutable 
Father. Yet while he could not foretell times or 
seasons, he encouraged his followers to watch for 
the signs of the new era, intimating that he who 
could observe the operations and learn the laws of 
life and growth might anticipate that era, as he 
might anticipate summer by the blossoming of the 
fig-tree. 

It is unnecessary to say to a congregation of 
thoughtful people in these days, that we are to 
look for the secret of this expectation of Jesus and 
his disciples concerning his future relation to the 
world, in his character, and in the relation to his- 
tory in which he was believed by himself and them 
to stand. It was too vital a belief, and held too 
large a place in their scheme of life, to be dependent 
upon any mere tradition of words of his. The car- 
dinal faiths of the first disciples were grounded less 
upon what he had said than upon what they knew 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 19 

him to be. His words are recorded less for their 
own sake than to portray his character as it ap- 
peared to those who had been acquainted with 
him. Sometimes but the slightest foundation ap- 
pears in his recorded sayings for their teachings 
concerning him, and yet the portrait they have 
drawn shows how these doctrines must have been 
inferred. Frequently his own sayings concerning 
himself have the marks of incidental and partial 
self-revelations of a profounder self-knowledge. 
Compared with what he has turned out to be, his 
claims for himself have an air of modesty and 
reserve. When he spoke he spoke truth ; but far 
more than that, he was the truth. 

Now the expectation, both of Jesus himself and 
of his first disciples, that he should one day occupy 
to the world a distinctively new and vastly more 
vital relationship than anything then in sight, was 
an expectation based directly upon a perception 
by himself, and more dimly by them, of what sort 
of character he was, and what a pivotal position 
he held in human history. He had at the begin- 
ning of his public career measured himself against 
the world as he found it, and he knew then that 
either he was a failure, and such a failure as to 
discredit the whole course of history, whose occur- 
rence in the universe was a disgrace to its God, or 
else the world must be revolutionized through him, 
and must accept him as henceforth its moral and 
historical centre. His faith in God and in himself, 



20 THE IMPERIAL C HEIST. 

as what he knew himself to be, left him no alter- 
native but to predict such a revolution. As to his 
disciples, they knew that he had come into their 
lives, and had turned them so completely about, 
had made such new men of them, that he was 
henceforth literally more to them than the whole 
world, and they were compelled, upon the basis of 
their personal experience with him, to assert that 
in so far as the world had not yet experienced a like 
change, it must do so. To do less than to affirm 
this would seem to them to be infidelity to him. 
No disciple of Jesus who had any realization of the 
change which had come to his own life, and who 
was in healthy touch with the e very-day life of the 
world, could fail to expect the world to be corre- 
spondingly changed. The only way in which to 
cherish the sense of personal experience of newness 
of life through Jesus, without expecting the world 
also to have a similar experience, is to regard one's 
self as living in a hopeless and hostile environ- 
ment, from which he anticipates a speedy removal. 
When the church gave up the hope of any early 
conquest of the world by Jesus, vital piety was 
able to maintain itself only by the cultivation of a 
morbid longing for the things beyond death, — 
by other-worldliness. It was then that " being a 
Christian " came to mean being " prepared to die." 
It is true that the faith of Christ involves a con- 
fidence in the things beyond this life, and cannot 
continue to exist unless it has such a message 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 21 

of hope. It involves this, however, not because of 
the hopelessness of the conquest of this world by 
Jesus, but because of the assurance that this world 
not only belongs by right to him, but shall actually 
be his. The hope for the unseen cannot possibly 
survive without a corresponding hope for the seen. 
If the known world is the devil's world, there are 
no data for any inference that the unknown world 
shall prove to be God's. Men say to us with 
force : " What use is it for you to preach blessed- 
ness in the next world, when this one is full of 
selfishness and injustice ? We must gain our ideas 
of what we cannot see from what we can see." 
They are in the right. If I am to acquiesce in 
this world's continuing to be the scene of injus- 
tice and triumphant selfishness, I must throw up 
my brief for the hope beyond. If I am to contend 
with any prospect of success for that hope, I must 
give myself with sincere diligence to the better- 
ment of all human relationships, — social, political, 
economical. People sometimes ask a minister to 
mind the affairs of religion, and let politics and 
business alone. It is just that kind of sticking 
to religion without reference to the establishment 
of right relationships between men which presently 
leaves one with no religion worth sticking to. True 
religion fulfills its mission when it creates a hope, 
or if need be a dread, of the permanence and cul- 
mination of present personal relationships. He, 
therefore, who would best serve its cause will try 



22 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

to better these present relationships. A disciple 
or a preacher of Jesus may carry his religion into 
politics in a wise or in an unwise way, but he 
cannot stay out or keep it out. In all contentions 
for social betterment the day comes when he who 
tries to keep out plays as assuredly into the hands 
of one party or other as he could do if he went 
in. Vital piety founded upon hope for the things 
beyond will wear out or starve unless it reaffirm 
continually its hope for the things here. There is 
no enduring hope in Christ which does not imply, 
as one of its essential elements, the hope for the 
regeneration of this world. A religious faith 
founded upon the character and mission of Jesus 
cannot continue to exist without faith in a social 
reconstruction. I cannot believe in and look for- 
ward to my own salvation without believing in 
and looking forward to the salvation of society. 
A personal piety which acquiesces in social hea- 
thenism cannot be prevented from degenerating 
into hypocrisy and cant. 

The feeling of this fact was a large part of the 
secret of the vigorous assertion of the early Chris- 
tian disciples, that things must speedily come to a 
crisis ; it was because they believed in God and 
in Jesus, and because, so believing, they could 
not conceive of things continuing as they were. 
The world could no more continue to be the same 
world it was than they could continue to be the 
same persons they were. Their own salvation 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 23 

could not stop until it was complete ; and it could 
not be complete without the salvation of the 
world of which they were a part. And thus they 
looked forward with confidence to the redemption 
of the world. 

It was only in obedience to the mental habits 
of their times that they looked for this change to 
come about through a physical miracle. It was 
natural for Paul to expect the world to be con- 
verted in much the same way in which he believed 
himself to have been. Yet we discover Paul, in 
one of his letters to the Thessalonians, beginning 
to calculate upon the basis of the normal develop- 
ment of social and religious and political forces. 
And even so unsophisticated a man as James, who 
was suspicious of all rationalizers, had caught the 
meaning of Jesus' simile of the blossoming fig, 
and understands that the coming of the kingdom 
depends upon processes of ripening. Hence he 
uses the metaphor of our text, " Behold, the hus- 
bandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the 
earth, being patient over it until it receive the 
early and the latter rain." Thus from so unex- 
pected a quarter as that comes the suggestion that 
the world's regeneration is not to be a physical 
miracle, in any other sense than that in which all 
the processes of life may be regarded as miracu- 
lous. When we compare this state of mind with 
the contemporary superstitions, we are struck with 
its soundness. They expected the day of the 



24 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

Lord, and they expected it soon. On the whole, 
however, this expectation was dominated by the 
thought that it would come to the world as it had 
come to them, less as'a miracle than as the fruit- 
age of a seed-sowing in which they were them- 
selves busily engaged. 

It should be particularly noted that this preva- 
lence of the natural over the preternatural in their 
expectation did not dampen their enthusiasm or 
crowd the expectation off into the indefinite future. 
James referred to it in order to inculcate a rea- 
sonable patience, not by any means to justify a 
faithless indifference. He was none the less an 
eager believer in the speedy consummation of this 
event, although he expected it to conform to the 
laws of life. It was not the fault of the seed if it 
did not bring forth fruit speedily; and so, while 
he would be patient, he affirms that the day seems 
to him to be at hand. It is much to be regretted 
that we so often fail to combine the reasonableness 
of the early Christians with their enthusiasm. 
Why should rational ideas act like wet blankets to 
our fervor? I know a man of the broadest and 
soundest culture, an economist of international 
reputation, and not of the sentimental order, who 
confided to me that he had secured a copy of 
Lieutenant Totten's book on the approaching mil- 
lennium. As I smiled derisively, he said, " I 
know it is absurd, but there is warmth of convic- 
tion in it: and I, who expect something just as 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 25 

great to happen through the operation of social 
forces, can enjoy his earnestness, and feel the fire 
of his enthusiasm." I appreciate the position of 
this man. For myself, I am a stickler for the 
rational. I shall hardly trouble myself to read 
the lieutenant's book, and cannot blame Yale Col- 
lege for eliminating him from her list of instruc- 
tors. Yet I cannot help wondering whether the 
attitude of the great seats of learning bearing 
the Christian name, my own alma mater among 
the rest, toward the question of the regenera- 
tion of society, is not quite as illogical in its ab- 
sence of earnestness and enthusiasm. In calling 
themselves Christian, they profess to exalt Jesus 
and the spiritual force which he represents to a 
position which properly demands an expectation 
concerning his reconstruction of society ; but this 
expectation they notoriously and illogically fail to 
have or to foster. The centres of nominally 
Christian culture which make the highest pre- 
tensions are rather indifferent to the hope of the 
Christianization of Christendom. 

Hampton Institute, a school whose students are 
negroes and Indians, keeps five men in the field 
following up her alumni, and reporting what they 
are doing for the civilization of the races to which 
they belong, and for the hastening of the kingdom 
of Christ. She conceives that her mission is to 
equip men, not to succeed in the struggle for 
wealth, but to become leaders in the elevation of 



26 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

their kind. A graduate is regarded as casting dis- 
credit upon his alma mater who fails to contribute 
something to bring in the 'millennium. Older and 
more famous schools ought to take a hint. I know 
of intellectual circles in Christian institutions 
where it is not good form to mention the millen- 
nium. In my college days the man who expected 
it was of the obscurantist type, afraid to read 
Spinoza or Hume or Stuart Mill, and thought the 
new era would be ushered in by a spectacular 
meteorological display, without the intervention or 
even the presence of moral causes. In the circles 
of those who had the temerity to read and think, 
the notion of a speedy coming of the rule of the 
Christ was tabooed. Can it be that they who call 
themselves representatives of the highest type of 
culture regard our present civilization as of the 
millennial order? Or are they so content with 
what they know to be second best, that they are 
hostile to the best? Yet charges of this kind 
against the culture of our times cannot be made 
to-day without much greater qualifications than 
were required ten or twenty years ago. Jesus has 
been, either by better knowledge of his person or 
by the conquests of his spirit, invading that sphere 
rapidly of late, and many minds of the most thor- 
ough training are to-day devoting themselves with 
fervent enthusiasm to the bringing in of his age. 
It is coming to be seen that there is something 
hollow and false about a culture which calls itself 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 27 

Christian, and yet is blind to the fact that the 
character and the position of Jesus have in them 
a promise whose fulfillment must mean something 
revolutionary, and the postponement of whose ful- 
fillment cannot be reckoned on. It should be more 
readily perceived by the cultured than by the 
ignorant, provided the culture has been genuine 
enough to bring them into perceptive relations to 
realities, that the issue of our day is that of the 
imminency of the coming of the Christ-force to 
rule in the world. 

I have heard myself called an Adventist, — in 
contempt. I can endure that. I am an Adventist, 
not on the basis of a rabbinical interpretation 
of Daniel or Revelation, but on the basis of an 
untrammeled study of the character of the man 
whose birth is celebrated at Christmas, his passion 
during Lent, and his death on Good Friday ; who 
rose on Easter, and ascended, and sent a new spir- 
itual force of unmeasured possibilities to make an 
irruption into human history on Pentecost ; who is 
finally, through his spirit, to seat himself on the 
world's thrones of power. I am an Adventist be- 
cause, as I have remarked before, the years of the 
Christian era are not annular but spiral, not ever- 
lastingly revolving without progress. Each turn 
raises my expectation to a higher tension as the 
potentialities increase, until one of these days 
something will have to give way. I should be a 
faithless follower of Jesus, if with the knowlege 



28 THE IMPERIAL CUBIST. 

which has been granted me of his power, and of the 
position of advantage he occupies in the world, I 
did not look forward to every Advent season, not 
as a time to buy Christmas toys for grown-up 
infants to begin again the same trivial round, but 
as the time when the obstruction may give way, 
and the vast fund of Christian potentiality in the 
world become actuality. That thing is at any 
rate more probable each year than it ever was. 
" Now is our salvation nearer than when we be- 
lieved.*' I should belie my personal Christian 
profession, my general intelligence as a citizen of 
this age, my special culture as a student of Chris- 
tianity, if I did not make the expectation of a 
speedy consummation of the conquest of the world 
by Jesus a good part of the motive power and the 
working machinery of my life. 

We all remember how the charge was frequently 
reiterated, a few years ago, that, unless we could 
have a positive doctrine concerning the fate of 
those who die without the Gospel, the nerve of 
missions would be cut. A great missionary society 
was regarded as in danger because so many of its 
supporters refused to affirm concerning that thing. 
There was this much of truth in the charge : 
Christianity must have a faith concerning eschatol- 
ogy ; that is, concerning the final outcome. Its 
nerve is cut if it has no faith in the final outcome. 
Xow men generally do affirm less positively than 
they once did, concerning the destiny of the indi- 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 29 

vidua!. To fill the place of the discredited dog- 
mas in that respect, it is necessary that we learn 
to see that there is a basis for a strong faith 
in the consummation of the Christ-campaign, with 
the moral and spiritual crises which will inevita- 
bly come along with it. Here, too, we have a bet- 
ter basis for convictions, for it brings our doctrine 
out of the unseen into the visible world, where 
scientific evidence may be attainable. I may not 
say with full certainty that I know what becomes 
of the man who has not heard of the Christ. I 
can say with much assurance that I do know what 
will become of the nation which does not hear and 
obey the word of Christ. The day is coming rapidly 
when all the nations and civilizations in the world, 
both those that are and those that are not called 
Christian, will be brought to face the issue whether 
they are in harmony with the law of Christ or 
not. 

This consummation needs no physical miracle. 
I, for one, should be surprised and incredulous, I 
trust not too stubbornly incredulous, yet more in- 
credulous than I can find words to say, if a physi- 
cal miracle seemed to happen. But things have 
come to the pass when all that which is logically 
involved in the character and position of Jesus can 
occur without any miracle. The wizards of inven- 
tion and applied physical science have performed 
all the nature-miracles needed. The only thing 
needed now is that miracle of grace which shall 



30 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

bring a fair proportion of the professed followers 
of Jesus up to the logic of their own pretensions. 
James was right in exhorting to patience, so long 
as the fulfillment seemed to be in God's hands and 
the times were not ripe. But the right to judge 
when the times were not ripe implies the right to 
judge when they are ripe. It is now a fair judg- 
ment that God has passed the power over into our 
hands, and is waiting for us to strike the decisive 
blow. And since every moment of delay adds to 
the sum of human misery and guilt, which must 
be washed out in innocent blood, we incur a heavy 
responsibility if, because we would rather live in 
the world as it is than in the world as Jesus would 
have it, we decline to do our share, to strike our 
blow, to take up, if need be, our cross to bring on 
the end. 

We anticipated a little while ago the truth sug- 
gested by the text from Peter, that the closest of 
relationships exists between vital personal piety 
and faith in the speedy establishment of the Christ- 
rule on earth. It is a subtle form of moral infi- 
delity which pushes that crisis off into the indefi- 
nite future, and it may involve moral wreck. 
They are called " mockers " who say, " Where is 
the promise of his coming ? For from the day 
the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they 
were from the beginning of the creation." It is 
insinuated that their secret motive for so disbeliev- 
ing is that they are walking after their own lik- 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 31 

ings, which would put them out of sympathy with 
that reign. It would appear, therefore, that the 
apostle thought that not only vital piety but sound 
morality would suffer if the disciples of Jesus were 
content to live in an unregenerate society, and 
to wait until they died and could not help going 
to heaven. Can you or I be either pious or moral 
in the best sense if we do not believe with some 
warmth of conviction that our city as a whole, as 
a social, a political, an economic unit, ought to 
be and can be made at least as pious and moral as 
we are ? Or will our piety become unctuous cant, 
and our morality pharisaic prudentialism ? 

From his faith in the nearness of the consum- 
mation St. Peter makes several important practi- 
cal inferences. The first is that we should be of 
sound mind. It is not true that the belief in the com- 
ing of the Christ; in the regeneration of the world, 
in the Advent, is an inseparable companion of fa- 
naticism and of misdirected intellectual effort. It 
is the sin of cultured and level-headed Christians 
that that error should be permitted to have a show 
of support in the facts. Not only is such belief 
consistent with the highest grade of intelligence ; it 
should lead to the soundest exercise of discretion. 
Who will dare to be an intellectual sloven in the 
face of such an impending crisis ? Who will con- 
tinue to fondle his pet notions on all kinds of 
questions without asking about their pedigree, if 
he is persuaded that the great revolution is at 



32 THE IMPERIAL CUBIST. 

hand? Shall we drift on to it without taking 
soundings or determining our latitude and longi- 
tude ? How many of the opinions uttered in pri- 
vate and in public, by voice and in print, on all 
manner of topics, are serious and founded upon 
data? How many are borrowed slipshod whims 
or prejudices ? Let us look at the lot of views we 
hold on all subjects, from the currency to domes- 
tic service, and ask whether, if we were to see the 
heavens light up, and the Son of Man coming in 
the clouds to rale henceforth in human affairs, we 
should be ready to marshal them before him. 
Why, half of them are half infidel, unworthy of 
those who have the faith he had, and faith in him. 
We should be ashamed of them in his presence, 
and we only hold them because we have no vivid 
anticipation of ever being likely to have to account 
to him for them. It is high time that we, whose 
religion is vain unless we expect to account for 
our opinions to him, begin to emancipate ourselves 
from mean slavery to fashionable prejudices and 
whims of belief, and look squarely at facts, and 
think as is worthy of those whose God is the divine 
Loo'os, the Eeason of things. 

I do not know what Congress is going to do ; I 
do not pretend to know what it ought to do : nor 
do I think it is making the effort it should to 
know, itself. But if the men in it who call them- 
selves followers of Jesus, and who represent Chris- 
tian constituencies, believe as they should that the 



THE EXPECT AX CY OE FAITH. 33 

impending fact with which, as congressmen, they 
have to do is not the next election but the coming 
of the Christ-age, they would settle down to the 
business of finding out what to do with vastly 
more seriousness and to more purpose. Xothing 
would be so illuminating or so stimulating to the 
better mental faculties. The reason we have not 
found a way out of our economic troubles long 
since is, not because there are not brains enough 
to make the discovery, or that men of brains are 
not nominally Christian men, but because they 
have not been sufficiently impressed with the near- 
ness of the era of social and political and economic 
rejuvenation to throw upon them a sense of respon- 
sibility for the full use in the right direction of the 
brains they have. 

Not only should we be stimulated to sound think- 
ing but. as Peter also suggests, we should be sobered 
unto prayer. AYe should not only seek all human 
wisdom, we should be so impressed with our lack 
of wisdom that we should feel the need of prayer 
for it. We often fail to pray because we are living 
such narrow and petty lives that we do not realize 
the great lacks we suffer. If men knew and be- 
lieved more of all that impends, they would be 
constrained to go down upon their knees crying 
out for divine guardianship and assistance for the 
crises that are upon them. I do not know by what 
particular measures the new era is to be ushered 
in. Probably it is my sin that I have not found 



34 THE IMPEBIAL CHRIST. 

it out. I am not sure that it may not have to 
come through some wild convulsion like that which 
brought liberty to France. But I believe there is 
enough sound sense in the world, and communi- 
cable to it in answer to prayer, so that if men who 
believe in Jesus could be persuaded that it is actu- 
ally coming, they would find a way to avert the 
necessity for its coming through seas of blood. I 
am not at all sure but the young man or woman 
is here before me to-day who only needs the stim- 
ulus of the conviction of its nearness and certainty 
to become the person who may lead in the solu- 
tion of the problem of ways and means ; and so I 
preach in large hope. It was the preaching of an 
obscure monk in the Italian mountains which fruc- 
tified the mind of Savonarola, and so kindled a 
light which yet shines down the ages. 

There is another still more important thing sug- 
gested by Peter, which a sense of the nearness of 
the day of Christ ought to bring out in us, his 
followers. Many hands have attempted to draw 
pictures of the end of the world, and they all 
agree in portraying it as the occasion for the burst- 
ing out of the restrained flames of lust and hatred, 
which had been pent up and held down by the 
restraints of social convention. Let a city or a 
ship, say these artists, be given up for lost, and 
every mad passion will break forth. This idea 
grows out of the common notion that cruelty and 
sensuality are the primary qualities of human 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 35 

nature. We dispute it. Witness in contradiction 
the magnificent courage and self-restraint of the 
officers and seamen who went down with that 
British warship a year or two ago. We believe 
it is a part of the faith of Christ that not lust 
and hate, but purity and love are fundamental, 
and that hence the crisis of the end should bring 
these out with irresistible force. 

Not long since, in a newspaper interview, Alex- 
ander Dumas, that most skillful portrayer of human 
nature in its strong features, speaking of the arm- 
aments of Europe, declared that the significant 
fact about them is that the men who compose these 
armies do not hate one another, and that the day 
is coming quickly when, through the operation of 
international labor organizations and other propa- 
gating agencies, the spirit of brotherhood will 
have become so general that they cannot be de- 
pended upon to fight at the word of command. 
While disavowing any religious belief, and speak- 
ing only as an observer, he says that soon the 
ruling fact in the world will be the love which 
men will bear to one another. A sympathetic 
strike in a great European army at a critical junc- 
ture would cause men to behold the works of the 
Lord, what desolations He can make in the earth, 
how He can make wars to cease unto the ends of 
the earth, breaking the bow and cutting the spear 
in sunder, and burning the chariot in the fire. 
Then men would know that love is God. It will 



36 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

be exalted among the nations. It will be exalted 
in the earth. When that time has come, the em- 
pires of oppression will no longer be able to stand, 
and the day of the Christ will be here. 

The apostle, speaking of those who already- 
expected that day, legitimately tnrns the argument 
about the other way, and appeals to the nearness 
of the new age as an incentive above all things to 
the most fervent love. This ought to be an age 
of the fullest experience and expression of human 
affection, because it is an age of the deepest and 
widest expectation. Small-mindedness and self- 
seeking are inconsistent with an apprehension of 
the seriousness of the issues that are brewing. It 
is he who says, " The Lord delayeth his coming,'' 
who beats his man-servants and maid-servants, and 
makes himself an ojDpressor or defrauder or cor- 
rupter of his kind. He who has a sense of the 
nearness of the advent will administer all the power 
which has come into his hands as a steward of the 
manifold grace of God. He will exercise a charity 
that will cover the multitude of sins. He will 
speak, when he does speak, with responsibility as 
an oracle of God. He will minister as of the 
ability which God giveth. He will cease to think 
of his own things, but will seek the interests of 
others. Thus this truth of the speedy coming of 
the rule of the Christ, a truth logically involved 
in the attitude we hold to him as our Lord and 
Redeemer, will itself work the soundest revolution 



THE EXPECTANCY OF FAITH. 37 

in ourselves, purging us from prejudice and untruth 
and self-seeking, and bringing us out into a large- 
ness and nobility of love and service. And as the 
hope of Israel was one of the chief causes in bring- 
ing her Messiah, so this expectation itself will 
work most effectively to the bringing in of the 
Christ-age, when in all things God will be glorified 
through Jesus, to whom be praise and dominion 
forever and ever. Amen. 

Let us pray. 

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming 
didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before 
thee : grant that the ministers and stewards of 
thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make 
ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the dis- 
obedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy 
second coming to judge the world we may be found 
an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and 
reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever 
one God, world without end. Amen. 



III. 

THE ORIGINS OF JESUS. 

A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ. — Matt. i. 1. 

If we are to put faith in the Scripture we ought 
to begin at the beginning. We have formed the 
habit of skipping to the eighteenth verse of this 
chapter. It would be finical to pretend that this 
is because of anything other than the dullness of 
a list of names. Yet significantly parallel with it 
is the fact that the Christian church has formed 
the habit of neglecting to consider the line of 
causes, the generations, the geneses of Jesus, and 
has made it a virtue to believe in him more be- 
cause of occurrences in connection with him which 
seem not to belong to that line. Many a faith 
has been eclipsed because of the dogma of the un- 
explainableness of Jesus. That has been thrust 
first instead of coming after the book of genera- 
tions, in which place it might receive a light that 
would remove some of its difficulties. 

Things are known by their causes, their origins. 
Our mountains and valleys and plains, scarped 
cliffs and rounded gravel hills, are books of gen- 



THE ORIGINS OF JESUS. 39 

erations, most instructive to those who have the 
acuteness of perception, fertility of imagination, 
and strength of reason to construe them. The 
searcher for knowledge pores over the books of 
generations seeking the causes of things, and 
their causes, and theirs, until he exhausts him- 
self, not them. The modern doctrine of know- 
ledge holds a thing but half known, insecurely 
known, not quite practically known, until it has 
been known in its origin. To deny, therefore, the 
right to know Jesus in his origin is to cripple 
the knowledge of him, and to hinder somewhat 
the savingness of the faith which is founded upon 
that knowledge. The Jews were not more than 
half wrong who excused their skepticism concern- 
ing Jesus by the adage that " no good thing could 
come out of Nazareth." They misjudged the pos- 
sibilities of Nazareth, but they were quite right in 
reasoning from the law of cause and effect ; and 
no worse blunder has been made than the effort 
to exempt faith in Jesus from the obligation to 
regard that law. The author of this history of 
Jesus for Jewish readers was as truly inspired 
when he undertook to make for him a genealogi- 
cal table, as when he told the story of his mar- 
velous conception. It was because he and his 
readers instinctively felt that the Messiah must 
come of a legitimate line of ancestry, must have 
the promise and potency of heredity, and not be 
the freak of an irresponsible or capricious fate. 



40 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

Nothing less could or should have satisfied the 
Jews. It was the form which the law of continuity 
took in their minds. It showed that they had an 
aversion to sudden and unprepared-for happenings. 
Under the bigotry and selfishness of their narrow 
notions of genealogy was concealed the sense of 
the fact that, if a messianic era came, it would 
grow out of the courses of history through which 
they had passed. The genealogy of Jesus must 
show to them that he is of the seed of Abraham, 
that he is great David's greater Son, that in the 
loins of his ancestors he has passed through the 
fruitful experiences of the Babylonian captivity. 
These nodal points in their history must all be 
represented in the genealogy. Hence the chron- 
icler, choosing fourteen as a sacred round number, 
makes out fourteen generations from Abraham to 
David, fourteen from David to the captivity, and 
fourteen from the captivity to Jesus. 

It is useless to deny that it has an artificial look, 
and that the critics do not think much of it. But 
Paul did not write to Timothy that the Scriptures 
inform us on all points. What he said was that 
they make wise, — quite another thing. We may 
certainly gain more wisdom than knowledge from 
this table. We learn that, while the Jew expected 
miracles, he did not so expect them as to cause him 
to forget or neglect the divine forces which were 
working within his history, the operation of which, 
though they do not interrupt the process of causa- 



THE ORIGINS OF JESUS. 41 

tion, constitute the supreme marvel or miracle. 
And that idea of the Jew, that the forces which 
could bring the Messiah were within his history, 
was one which he carried over, so that it ruled 
largely in the minds of the writers of the New 
Testament, which is remarkable for the way in 
which it brings in the causes of things, and tries 
to avoid creating out of nothing. "How many 
loaves have ye ? " " Fill ye the water pots with 
water." " Roll ye away the stone," are hints of 
the sparingness of the miraculous. This furnish- 
ing of genealogy to Jesus is an illustration of the 
same disposition to bring all that is messianic out 
of the world, as well as to put it into the world. 
May it not be worth while to imitate the Scrip- 
tures in seeking first to find the intelligible side of 
him who came, not that he might confound the 
human mind, but that he might make all things 
clear to it in the divinest of lights ? 

The joy of Christmas is spoiled for many by the 
feeling that they cannot come into it with the 
childlike abandon they once did. Each year it 
becomes more truly the festival of childlikeness. 
Yet to the reflecting mind comes the query 
whether this childlikeness will bear aging, whether 
it stands for anything of cosmic validity, whether 
it is a radiance from the countenance of the Eter- 
nal. We smooth out the wrinkles, and spend the 
day like children. Will the wrinkles all smooth 
honestly away ? Can we let out our energies 



42 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

without reserve in cliildlikeness ? How can we, 
unless we believe there is something fundamental 
about the child-nature, that we are really children, 
that by the child-spirit is the nature of the king- 
dom of the unseen to be judged ? Christmas can 
be a festival of unembittered joy to the thought- 
ful person only as he can believe with a faith 
unbounded that as he sits benign, contemplating 
with sympathy the sports of his children, so one 
who is supreme superintends, and with benignant 
heart shares his joys and theirs. 

Can he believe this? Or is Christmas but a 
tree without a root, with tinsel foliage and arti- 
ficial fruit ? If we are to have a true Christmas 
we must have a Christ, a being who interprets to 
us the disposition of the Eternal. Since Jesus 
alone can lay claim to attention in these days as a 
Christ, the question for all minds is whether he 
is a real Christ, whether he is such a being as to 
have a right to be accepted by us as the key to the 
character of the Inscrutable. At Christmas, of 
all seasons, we would know what warrant, if any, 
we have for a faith in our Father, in whom alone 
can cliildlikeness trust. Else all our joy is an 
illusion, leading to the development of greater pos- 
sibilities of wretchedness. Of all ensnaring joys 
the most delusive grow out of the spirit of the 
child, should that child prove to be an eternal 
orphan. I raise these questions because I dare to, 
because I have to preach a gospel of the Father 



THE ORIGINS OF JESUS. 43 

God made known in the Christhood of Jesus. I 
would that this Christmas season might be a land- 
mark in all our lives, because of a new conviction 
of that Fatherhood through a new vision of the 
Christhood of Jesus, pouring its thrilling light 
into every recess of our souls, and awakening from 
the remotest corners of our universe the angelic 
strain, " Glory to God." To this end I would that 
Jesus could be seen as nothing less than the 
Christ, the Son of the living God. Nothing short 
of this will satisfy me, because I am sure that 
nothing short of this will permanently satisfy the 
demands of your reflecting intelligence. 

And it is because I seek thus to show Jesus as 
the Christ, the Son of the Eternal, that I would 
lay large emphasis upon his genealogy ; not upon 
this table, but upon that for which it stands repre- 
sentative, the genetic relationship of Jesus to all 
that which makes up human history. Because the 
question about God, whether he be a Father, or a 
fiend, or whether he have any interest at all in 
men, is a question which can be answered to the 
mind of the present age, not by that which makes 
invasion into history without being part of it, but 
by that which either is itself the supreme outcome 
of history, or which so gathers up into itself the 
potency of the past, that it is destined to determine 
all the future. The Christ, for good or ill, is 
he who so stands as the supreme representative 
of that which has been, that he is to ride that 



44 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

which is to be. Whatever sort of person he 
is, such must our faith or our fear paint the 
Eternal. We preach that the Eternal is to be 
painted by faith in the image of Jesus ; therefore, 
not because Jesus was without a genealogy, but 
because he has gathered up in himself the most 
perfect qualities of all the generations of men, we 
preach the Christhood of Jesus upon the basis of 
his genealogy rightly understood. What excep- 
tional things are in him correspond to exceptional 
things in his antecedents. Jesus can be known 
in his causes as the Christ of God. The book of 
the generation of Jesus the Christ runs back into 
the most remarkable set of causes in all history. 
There need be nothing commonplace in him, for 
there is nothing commonplace in the causes that 
preceded him. 

The author of this catalogue, however artificial 
it may be in detail, was not mistaken in choosing 
the principal turning-point of the history which 
brought Jesus into being. He seized firmly the 
fact that in the father of the Hebrew race a new 
era was begun by the entrance into active share in 
human affairs of a noble and generous hope, which 
manifested itself in a new and saving spirit. How 
long this hope may have been cherished, how long 
this spirit may have operated in narrow circles or 
in series of choice individuals, there is no means 
of knowing. Legend and the nature of the case 
point far back into the mists of antiquity. At 



THE OBIGIXS OF JESUS. 45 

the point where the legendary passes into the his- 
torical in Hebrew life, it had become a power of 
more than individual significance. It had passed 
into a social movement, and seers could declare 
that they saw in it a promise of final conquest. In 
David's day it had passed from a social into a 
political force, and had brought the race to which 
it belonged to rank, for a little, among the great 
world powers. But world powers rise and fall. 
Such is their destiny. If the greatest achievement 
of this peculiar force would prove to be to make 
Israel a world power, it could never produce a 
Christ, for a Christ must be greater than any one 
of the world's great powers. It must show its 
ability to survive the decay and overthrow of the 
world power which it had itself created. Such 
proof it gave. Israel as a political entity was 
erased from the map of the world ; and yet this 
social force which had made her such persisted 
and gathered strength not only in spite of but 
because of her fall. The Babylonian enslavement 
was thus, as the author of this first chapter of 
Matthew's Gospel surmises, one of the chief turn- 
ing-points in the history of the causes which 
brought the Messiah. No great social movement 
is fit to succeed until it has been baptized with 
political defeat. The messianic cause, the cause 
of both God and man, has to suffer complete polit- 
ical failure. Not that such failure is to be its 
final portion, but that it is one of the phases 



46 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

through which it must pass in coming to itself. 
And thus it was that the cause of Christhood was 
making progress toward the bringing in of the 
Christ. Jesus was not one who came at the end 
of a long course of history which had been a fail- 
ure, and who set at naught all the causes which 
had been operating through it, and all the expecta- 
tions it had been fitted to arouse. He came because 
of it, because Abraham was, and David was, and 
the captivity was ; so Jesus was. He was the 
fruit of that long course of history. 

If we do justice to this course of history, if we 
study aright these seventeen verses of genealogy, 
we may be able also to discover then that the spirit- 
ual influence which the Scriptures declare had so 
large a part to play in the coming of Jesus also be- 
longed to the history out of which he came. That 
spirit was the same spirit which had been work- 
ing in the prophets and patriarchs and poets of 
Israel from the first. It was the spirit of Abraham, 
of Moses, of David, of Saul, and Elijah and Isaiah. 
It was the spirit of Jehovah, the national god of 
Israel. It was acting within the nation in the 
form of the national spirit, the social force which 
controlled its destinies. It could be foreseen and 
foretold that, if ever the history of Israel achieved 
what it was fitted to achieve, the spirit of Jehovah, 
working as a social and a religious force, would 
be one of the principal factors in producing that 
result. I say that that spirit was a social as well 



THE ORIGINS OF JESUS. 47 

as a religious force, in witness of which see the song 
of Mary, the Magnificat, whose tone of hope of 
social revolution is quite as marked as that which 
is religious in it. 

Thus beginning with the study of the genesis 
of Jesus in its more intelligible aspects, we shall 
discover that the less intelligible will have a new 
light shed upon them, which they do not possess 
when we come to them directly. It will appear 
that the birth of Jesus is less remarkable for any- 
thing which may not be human about it than 
because it is so uniquely normal in its humanity. 
He came out of a course of history more nearly 
normal than any the world had yet lived. No other 
civilization had succeeded in eliminating slavery 
from itself. No other had fastened so large a 
degree of individuality in harmony with so perfect 
and stable a social organism, had so steered be- 
tween individualism and socialism, between despot- 
ism and anarchism. There never was so fine a 
balance of humanity in all its parts as in that 
course of history which gave birth to the Son of 
Man. When one contemplates that history, weighs 
its possibilities, and focuses together the many 
lights of its ideals, he can predict with some cer- 
tainty that, if it ever fulfills itself, the result will 
be a typical man, a Christ man, one standing in 
a unique relation to mankind, exercising, or hav- 
ing a right to exercise, a unique sovereignty, to 
play a unique part in all human affairs, to be 



48 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

the object of a unique regard, and, if he be mor- 
ally worthy, of a unique worship, or if unworthy, 
of such a curse as no other being ever brought 
upon himself from the heart of man. Of such 
a being was Hebrew history pregnant, a being 
who should save the world by hope, or damn it by 
despair. It is an ignorant prejudice which many, 
who call themselves advanced, have against the 
Old Testament. The truly modern mind lays 
hold of the Old Testament with avidity, because 
it is the literature through which is learned the 
origins of the man who chiefly concerns men in 
this day. 

I commend to you the book of the origins of 
Jesus. Whether our Christmas shall have a Christ 
in it, whether it shall continue to be to us as men 
and women the festival it was to us as children, 
must depend upon the result of our intelligent 
effort to understand Jesus in his character and 
antecedents. He himself asked of the Jews, 
" What think ye of the Christ ? Whose son is 
he ? " His criticism of their conviction that he 
was to be the Son of David was not because they 
held it, but because they held so little of the truth 
of it. I would preach at this Christmas season 
the need to the world of the faith in a Christ, the 
claim that Jesus is the Christ, and the demand 
for an intelligent faith, which indeed shall tran- 
scend but shall not despise knowledge, or neglect 
to have a knowledge to transcend. But I would 



THE ORIGINS OF JESUS. 49 

not preach the importance of the knowledge of 
Jesus simply for the gratification of curiosity, how- 
ever noble the love of knowledge for its own sake 
may be. I would not encourage the effort to find 
that Jesus came out of history simply to meet the 
skepticism of those who demand it as the condition 
of their faith in him. But in most subtle ways 
the faith that Jesus can enter into history, that 
he can ramify into all of its parts, and recreate 
human character and human society in all of its 
fibres, is dependent upon the conviction that he 
came out of history. It is part of the gospel of 
the incarnation that in all points except sin he 
was made as we are ; and we are speedily made 
aware, when we attempt to set out on independent 
lines, that we are members of a race, conditioned 
by its circumstances and its history. If he is not 
also a part of the race, we cannot look with the 
same confidence to his finding out the needs and 
answering to the demands of the race. 

Because Jesus came out of the race, no single 
formula can define him or act with his saving 
potency. Could a formula liave saved men, a man 
ought not to have been sacrificed. It is because 
men have not sought to know and interpret Jesus 
in the light of the history that produced him that 
they have supposed that certain shibboleths car- 
ried with them all the saving force that there is 
in him. But no shibboleth can stand for Jesus ; 
Jesus cannot be known by a phrase ; he cannot 



50 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

be preached by ringing the changes on any phrase. 
I say more, Jesus cannot be known or preached 
from the Gospels alone. Not only the apostles, 
who interpret him in the light of afterthought, 
but the ancient Scriptures, which betray the work- 
ing up of the tension out of which he came, are 
needed. More even yet ; all history, and all that 
which constitutes the physical basis of history, all 
the biological and physical sciences, are to yield 
up their data for such a knowledge of Jesus as 
shall make it possible fully to work him into the 
texture of modern life. 

One of the arguments, and the most effective 
one, in favor of the study of classical antiquity is 
that antiquity has contributed so much in so many 
ways to modern life and the conditions which sur- 
round it, that he who would be in his element in 
life, and strike instinctively at the truest success 
in it, must be trained into intelligent sympathy 
with the life of the ancients. I would maintain 
on similar grounds that the knowledge in detail of 
the character and the origins of Jesus will be the 
only way so to bring men into intelligently sym- 
pathetic relations with the world of men, out of 
which he was born, and into which he has wrought 
himself, that they may live the Christ-life therein. 
One of the most urgent needs of the men of to-day 
is to know Jesus ; not merely to know him in the 
metaphysical or mystic sense of the theologian or 
the pietist, not merely to be imbued with his spirit, 



THE ORIGINS OF JESUS. 51 

and thus know him by spiritual insight, but to 
know him by the same faculties by which they 
know other things ; to know him in the book of 
his origins, in the causes that produced and can 
reproduce him, in the men and women who lived 
the Christ-life in anticipation of the Christ-day. 



IV. 

THE TEMPTATION. 
Matthew iv. 1-1 1. 

The fate of the world is always turning upon 
incidents. Side issues swallow up main issues, 
and then, having become themselves main issues, 
are in turn swallowed up by new side issues, and 
thus the stream of history makes its devious way. 
The partial awakening of the Jewish people to a 
consciousness of their supreme duty and opportu- 
nity under the preaching of John the Baptist inci- 
dentally waked up the self-consciousness of Jesus 
of Nazareth, and henceforth he, rather than the 
nation, becomes of prime interest. Heeding the 
voice of one whom he saw to be a true prophet, 
doing what seemed to him to be the duty of a 
loyal Jew, preparing to play whatever part might 
be assigned him in the coming crisis of the 
kingdom, and already suspecting that he was to 
be the chief instrument through whom the kingdom 
of God was to come, he had, in the performance 
of that simple and apparently artificial duty of 
submitting to baptism, suddenly arrived at the 
most startling conviction as to who he was. 



THE TEMPTATION. 53 

Heretofore, though he may have pondered the 
problem whether he was not the Messiah, it need 
not have led him to think about his own great- 
ness or littleness. He may easily have been con- 
tent with the common Jewish notion that the 
coming of this kingdom was to be an event purely 
miraculous, and that the messianic instrument was 
to be a mere tool in the hands of divine power. 
In accordance with this idea, he could wait in 
unreflecting humility and patience, cherishing the 
sublime and comforting consciousness of divine 
fatherhood, but omitting to draw from it any ade- 
quate inferences concerning his own sonship, and 
what sonship meant in his case. But the baptis- 
mal principle of the great prophet was that each 
man should take upon himself personal responsi- 
bility for his share in the coming event, — the 
sinful by repenting, and those who needed no 
repentance by setting their faces toward the bring- 
ing in of the kingdom in whatever way they were 
able. The story was that Jesus was the only can- 
didate that came who did not strike the prophet 
as needing repentance ; and so absorbed had that 
preacher been with the fact that turning from sin 
was the main thing, that he was unwilling to bap- 
tize Jesus until the latter himself suggested the 
true interpretation of his own principle. The 
baptism of Jesus had put an end to the period of 
passive waiting, and opened to his mind the ques- 
tion what he should do. But the first part of 



54 THE IMPEBIAL CHBIST. 

that question was who he really was, and what 
were his resources. He must take account of 
himself. There suddenly bloomed out the thought, 
whose germ we find in his mind many years ear- 
lier, that he was the Son of God, and hence not a 
mere instrument to be worked by divine power. 
And when this idea made union with the other 
nascent thought, that he was the Jewish Messiah, 
there came to him the most remarkable conscious- 
ness of his own greatness and the most overwhelm- 
ing sense of his own responsibility. No other 
man ever thought himself so great without being 
manifestly insane ; yet no other man has ever so 
impressed the world with his sanity. Matthew 
Arnold names his sanity as his prime character- 
istic. Nothing so surely makes a man appear 
absurd as to overestimate himself. No one ever 
put his self-estimate higher than Jesus, yet he 
never appears absurd. This would seem to in- 
dicate that his estimate is correct. 

As a Jew, Jesus believed that the Jewish Mes- 
siah was to occupy the crowning point of human 
history. When Jesus thought of his being the 
Messiah, he thought of occupying that point. But 
there is no evidence that, until the moment of his 
baptism, that idea carried with it any answer to 
the question whether he was to hold that supreme 
place by virtue of inherent greatness, or simply as 
a messenger arbitrarily chosen regardless of per- 
sonal fitness. The latter was more in accordance 



THE TEMPTATION. 55 

with the current Jewish notion. Now the question 
was being pressed by the terms of his baptism, 
and the answer came in what was to him a voice 
from his Father. It is of much importance what 
that answer was. 

Which of these alternatives shall stand to us 
for truth will depend, if we ever come to have a 
rational faith or unf aith, upon whether we agree or 
not with Jesus' estimate of himself. He thought, 
whether mistakenly or not this is not the place 
to say, that the Jewish Messiah was to hold the 
supreme place in history, that he was to be that 
Messiah, and that he was no mere messenger, but 
the Son of God; and hence that his greatness, 
while purely relative and derivative, as a son's 
must be, was his own, and was real in quality and 
unmeasured in quantity. If anything like this is 
what Jesus meant when he called himself the Son 
of God, and if he arrived at the idea in any such 
way as has been described, is it such an incredible 
or incomprehensible conception as it is sometimes 
made out to be ? The author of the Fourth Gos- 
pel has reported what purport to be and seem to 
be genuine sayings of Jesus expressing this double 
sense of subordination and of independence. " The 
Son can do nothing of himself; " and yet, "As the 
Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the 
Son to have life in himself ; and hath given him 
authority to execute judgment also, because he is 
the Son of man," the crowning personage in human 
history. 



56 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

And now, at the very point where the Gospel 
narratives agree with the nature of the case in 
declaring that Jesus came to the distinct conscious- 
ness of his sonship, they again agree with the 
nature of the case in declaring that he came face 
to face with a series of awful temptations. 

We need not undertake to decide exactly how 
much of this story of the temptation is strict fact, 
and how much pictorial coloring. The literal 
accuracy of the account is no longer affirmed, nor 
the existence in it of a solid kernel of fact any 
longer denied. The original information must have 
come from Jesus himself. It is easy to imagine 
why he should have given such confidences to his 
disciples. He made free with them in many ways, 
and always craved their sympathy. Temptations 
of the same class were always coming up anew, and 
leading them to ask of him a letting down of the 
high standard he had set. He must show them 
that these matters had been settled once for all, 
and were no longer open questions. 

It was the custom of Jesus throughout his min- 
istry to assume that he had met and conquered 
Satan. The disciples would understand such an 
assumption in a rather crude and materialistic way, 
and would almost certainly ask him for an account 
of the contest. Although it was to himself a most 
genuine experience, he could tell about it only in 
pictorial language ; and they would inevitably con- 
strue it more literally than he meant it. Partly 



THE TEMPTATION. 57 

to save them from the crude and non-moral notions 
which they would certainly borrow from common 
habits of thought, he would have to tell the story 
in his own way. 

We must not, however, go too far in supposing 
that Jesus accommodated himself to their modes 
of thinking. He evidently believed in a personal 
Satan, and that he had had personal encounters 
with him, as is shown by the whole tenor of the 
Gospel narratives. There was no other belief 
possible to a man of that age which would have 
been able to serve the purpose. And Jesus be- 
longed to his age. He was a man among the men 
of his times, and there was no way by which he 
could rise to the Jewish conception of actual moral 
conflict which was being waged, without at the 
same time adopting the Jewish habit of personify- 
ing the power of evil. The idea of Jesus that, in 
dealing with sin, he dealt with a mighty potentate, 
a worthy antagonist of one who would found a 
spiritual empire, was part of his sublime concep- 
tion of the universe. If the idea of evil as a mere 
abstraction is truer than that it is in some sense a 
concrete power, then truth is petty, and fiction is 
grander and worthier than truth. And so it comes 
out that our verdict concerning even the value and 
dignity of truth will depend upon what shall be 
our verdict concerning Jesus. 

Jesus believed that he was confronted by a per- 
sonal power of evil. The suggestions of evil that 



58 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

came to him, not, as he well knew, from his own 
heart, he interpreted as suggestions from an evil 
person, just as he interpreted the suggestions of 
good that came to him as the words of his Heavenly- 
Father. 

Now, when Jesus became conscious of his per- 
sonal freedom to act as a son, rather than as an 
instrument, and to let the very conception and 
plan of the messianic kingdom be of his human 
designing, rather than of such passive revealing 
as Mahomet professed, the sense of responsibility 
for the choice of his acts and policies had driven 
him into seclusion. There he would solve the 
problem what sort of an era the Christ-era should 
be, and in what way he should introduce it. 

His earlier thought that all this would be set- 
tled for him had given place to the consciousness 
that one of the offices of the Jewish Messiah, as 
the Son of God, was to use his own judgment, 
because he was also the Son of man. And it was 
in the exercise of this high right of using his own 
judgment that his mind had been thrown open to 
suggestions, and thus the suggestions of evil had 
come among the rest. 

We cannot entertain the supposition of some, 
that Jesus fell into a trance, and that these temp- 
tations seemed to come to him in that state, — 
seemed to come, for in that state, nothing worthy 
of the name of temptation could actually come. 
The trance medium is the victim for the time of a 



THE TEMPTATION. 59 

fixed idea, of a mere mechanical train of associa- 
tions, or of another personality, and hence he abdi- 
cates his own manhood. By virtue of the fact 
that throughout his life Jesus carried out consis- 
tently the character of the Son of God, and not 
the instrument of God, he never at any time 
showed any trance symptoms. He met temptation 
as a man must meet it, in possession of all his 
faculties, and in full exercise of all the preroga- 
tives of a man. 

But there are friends of his who revolt against 
the idea that he could have been actually tempted. 
They would fain believe that it was only apparent. 
Yet to say that he could not be actually tempted 
is to say that he was not actually a man ; it is to 
cut him loose from history, from the race; it is 
to cut the saving bond of sympathy which we have 
with him. It is to say that God has made a race 
of men, and placed a puppet king to rule over 
them ; it is to deny the incarnation, and thus to 
overthrow the whole fabric of Christian doctrine, 
which these very friends of his would be the last 
to wish to do. 

Again, the same attempt to dehumanize him 
takes the form of asserting that the successful 
resistance of the temptation was a foregone conclu- 
sion. But where free human choice is concerned, 
there is no such thing as a foregone conclusion 
until after the event ; and then all conclusions are 
foregone. There is a sense in which it was a 



60 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

foregone conclusion that Jesus should have re- 
sisted; but it is the same sense in which it was 
a foregone conclusion that Judas should guiltily 
yield. To speak of a foregone conclusion in any 
other sense is to reduce Jesus at one stroke again 
to a mere instrument; it is to insinuate that his 
consciousness of sonship was an illusion. 

It is significant that we are not told that Jesus 
prayed during that time. His life had been and 
continued to be a life of prayer. Yet it has been 
observed that, while he is always said to have 
prayed before and after any great act, he per- 
formed the act on his own responsibility. A story 
told of Leonard Bacon illustrates the principle. 
At some convention where weighty action was 
being too long delayed, some one threatened still 
further postponement by proposing, " Let us pray." 
" Pray ! " thundered Bacon, "it is no time to 
pray. It is time to vote." The times of decision 
are times when self-respect demands that the son 
depend upon his own unaided powers, when he re- 
frains from asking any longer even the help of his 
father ; there are times when God himself, out of 
respect for the freedom of his Son, would stand 
aside and withhold his influence. By a life of 
constant intercourse with the Father the Son fits 
himself to decide aright. But when the moment 
for decision comes, he summons himself to action, 
withdraws from all eyes, and decides with his own 
strength. 



THE TEMPTATION. 61 

Every parent knows that there are crises, the 
most momentous in the life of the child who is 
growing to maturity, when he must withhold coun- 
sel, and withdraw even his presence. It is an 
awful thought, and yet it is one which is demanded 
by the highest sense of human dignity, of human 
sonship, the thought that the critical moments of 
our lives are moments when even God, if we are 
to think of Him as a Father, must stand aside and 
allow us to choose our own way. He will wait 
with infinite solicitude for the moment when, the 
right choice having been made, we fall fainting 
from exhaustion; and then the picture of his send- 
ing angels to strengthen us must be a true one. 
But only an Evil One can be indecent enough to 
intrude, and take advantage of the crisis to trip us 
into a surrender of our manhood. 

The form which temptation would take to Jesus 
would naturally be determined by the circum- 
stances of the case, and by his preconceptions. 
Here was the man who had become aware that he 
was to be the Jewish Messiah, suddenly thrown 
upon his own resources to decide what construc- 
tion he should put upon that term, and how he 
should set out to realize his messiahship. In his 
own conscience he is certain that the event can be 
nothing else than the realization in all men's lives 
of the same perfect fellowship with a Heavenly 
Father which has been his own life hitherto, and 
as a consequence of this a bringing in of a new 



62 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

sense of human brotherhood. Anything which 
falls short of this is short of messianic ; anything 
going beyond this is inconceivable ; anything that 
may compete with or crowd aside this sense of 
divine fatherhood and human sonship and brother- 
hood is sinful and wrong. So, then, the work 
which lay before him was to undertake to bring 
the Jewish nation to see things as he saw them ; 
and then the Jewish nation would bring the world 
to see them in the same light. Some such idea as 
this must have been in his mind, in a vague and 
at first a rather distressingly elusive form, so far 
as concerned the method of realizing it. To the 
divining and carrying out methods for realizing 
this idea, he must devote his mind and strength. 

Now comes the temptation. This sense of the 
fatherhood of God and the sonship and brother- 
hood of man was the product of his most normal 
human experiences as the peasant's son and the 
workingman. All the conditions which make such 
a sense intelligible and desirable are human condi- 
tions. Intimately associated with and almost at 
the foundation of them all is the problem of bread, 
of getting a living. That problem is one of the 
facts which lie at the basis of the institution of the 
family, in which he had learned the meaning of 
parenthood, sonship, and brotherhood. If he would 
bring in that sense of fatherhood and brotherhood 
as a universal sense, there is no conceivable way 
of doing it otherwise than on the basis of human- 



THE TEMPTATION. 63 

ity in its natural conditions. He believes that he 
has preternatural power at his disposal, that if he 
will he can be independent of these natural condi- 
tions, and can at once by an exercise of this power 
relieve his own lower physical necessities. To do 
this, however, is to put a distance between himself 
and common humanity. Now that age, like this, 
was prone to regard the test of greatness to be the 
ability to put ourselves on a different footing from 
common men as regards the satisfaction of these 
common needs of life. 

The temptation comes to every able man, when 
he first fully realizes his ability and takes his meas- 
ure, to prove it by prostituting it to the service of 
his lower nature. Moreover, he is taunted to it by 
the world, which tells him that " nothing succeeds 
like success ; " that, if he be the man of ability he 
is conscious of being, his bank account is the best 
evidence of it. He could endure hunger and the 
hard bed and scanty clothing; indeed, he does 
endure these voluntarily in the pursuit of his aims. 
But the world, the power not liimself that makes 
for evil, says to him in a thousand different ways 
that he ought to prove, both to it and to himself, 
that he is the man of ability he thinks he is, by 
making money. " If you are the Son of God, if 
you are the man you think you are, put money in 
your purse, put money in your purse." It is not 
a temptation that necessarily comes from within. 
It crowds in upon him from without, yet not in 



64 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

the person of any one man ; it is an atmosphere. 
He has to rally all the forces of his personality 
to meet it, as though it were a sort of personality, 
like the spirit of the age, or like a great corpora- 
tion, which the law has to personify in order to 
deal with. So he may have to personify this in- 
fluence that makes for evil before he can resist it 
with success. 

Jesus believed that the superior power he was 
conscious of possessing was a miraculous one. It 
may be said that he was mistaken in so thinking. 
But it matters not if he was, so long as he re- 
sisted the temptation to try the illicit use of it. 
It might be said that his belief that he could 
perform miracles was only the form which his 
knowledge of his own greatness took in his own 
mind. If he had tried to make stones bread 
and failed, he would have lost faith in his own 
sonship ; and if he had succeeded, or imagined 
he succeeded, he would have cut the tie that bound 
him to ordinary human nature, so that a kingdom 
of salvation held together by personal sympathy 
between him and other men would Lave been im- 
possible. He founded his movement at the last 
on the friendship between him and his disciples. 
Such a bond would have been impossible had he 
yielded to this temptation. It would have had no 
material basis. 

But while his miraculous power would have been 
tested, had he yielded to the temptation, to resist 



THE TEMPTATION. 65 

it needed no miracle. His early grounding in the 
Scripture, in a pious home, furnished him with the 
very language of the idea which should drive out 
the evil suggestion : " Man shall not live by bread 
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God." He had learned in the natural 
way from the Scripture the great truth that there 
were higher laws than those of appetite, — higher 
even than those of physical sustenance; and he 
would not violate these higher laws. He had 
learned that his relationship to his Father was 
one that made him independent of these natural 
means of subsistence, not by imparting the power 
to make bread of stones, but by giving him the 
courage to endure hunger. 

Just here he seemed to show a joint in his har- 
ness, and the temptation seeks to take advantage 
of it at once. " He would live for the higher alone, 
would he? Then," says the tempter, "he is en- 
titled to do so, and he can too ; for the conscious- 
ness of his unique greatness gives him the right to 
claim the highest promises ever put forth by the 
Almighty. He has been quoting Scripture. Here 
is a word of Scripture : ' He shall give his angels 
charge concerning thee ; and in their hands they 
shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy 
foot against a stone.' To whom is it more likely 
that this applies than to him ? " And so it was 
as though he stood on a pinnacle of the temple, 
and it was suggested that he cast himself down, 



66 THE IMPEBIAL CHRIST. 

and in his salvation from destruction verify the 
conviction that he was the Son of God, at the same 
time winning an unbounded influence over the 
people as a magician. But no. He had needed 
no verification of his sense of sonship ; and if he 
did need it, a miracle of levitation would have 
been a contemptible ally to stand alongside of 
his consciousness. 

He loathed the sort of kingdom he could estab- 
lish by magical rather than by moral means. It 
would in truth be established by separating him- 
self from men rather than by identifying himself 
with them. No motive could lead him to such 
action but pride and presumption. If he succeeded 
in this miracle he would be farther removed from 
men than he would have been by making stones 
bread. 

He would violate no laws, else he could not be 
himself the first loyal citizen of his new kingdom 
of humanity, such an one that others could be like 
him. If he went to creating bread out of stones, 
and leaping from heights, even if he succeeded, 
and taught others the secret, he could found no 
kingdom of humanity thereby. For such a king- 
dom would be a kingdom of fantastic monsters, in 
whom humanity could not continue to exist, because 
the set conditions under which humanity was 
evolved had been destroyed. Man's relation to his 
environment, physical, moral, and spiritual, would 
be wholly changed, and he would therefore be in no 



THE TEMPTATION. 67 

wise the creature he had been. Humanity is what 
it is, in all its characteristics, from the bottom 
to the top, because of laws, both physical and 
spiritual, which have operated from the first. He 
who expects that it will become different without 
the serious application of rational and natural and 
adequate means, and acts upon the expectation, 
is guilty of presumption. His methods lead to 
spiritual pride, in so far as he deludes himself into 
the belief that he is having success. Many reform- 
ers fail to observe this ; and their reforms, while 
seeming to flourish for a time, surely come to 
naught, while they themselves are either puffed up 
with pride or presumption, or cast into a reaction 
of bitterness and despair. 

The tempter found that Jesus would not put his 
conviction that he was the Son of God to the test 
of acting as though he were not a son, and dis- 
obeying presumptuously either the higher or the 
lower laws of his Father's universe, but that he 
was determined to establish his kingdom by actions 
wholly within the range of the human, and that it 
was to be a human kingdom. Then following still, 
as it has hitherto, the law of association of ideas, 
and hence with a psychological probability that 
goes far to prove the truthfulness of the story, the 
temptation proceeds to suggest that, since it is to 
be a purely human kingdom, the way to establish 
it is the way such kingdoms have been established 
hitherto. If he is not to found his kingdom upon 



68 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

miracles high or low, then what need is there that 
he should recognize himself as the Son of God? 
What is God for, except miracles, privileges to set 
aside ordinary modes of procedure ? The average 
un spiritual thought of the world then and now 
regards God as nothing if not a miracle worker. 
It will be as though it had no God unless He per- 
forms miracles. The average son of royalty acts 
as though he prized his position chiefly because it 
seems to entitle him to defy even the laws of 
decency if he happens to choose. If Jesus is to 
depend for the founding of his kingdom upon his 
inherent human powers, why not cut loose from 
God? If he did not expect God to perform 
miracles for him, what use had he for God ? Why 
not set up for himself like other kings ? He was 
to do the work himself, why not pay the homage to 
himself ? 

Such suggestions came from without. All his- 
tory puts them forward. Man has been the archi- 
tect of his own fortunes, therefore the supreme 
man must be a self-made man. Jesus himself had 
seen and asserted as much ; for whatever miracu- 
lous power, that is, power outside his legitimate 
human power, he believed himself to have, he did 
not at this time believe he had a right to use, 
either in sustaining, protecting, or advancing him- 
self. His self-respect as well as his unselfishness 
required him to submit to all the laws of the 
republic of humanity, of which he was to be the 



THE TEMPTATION. 69 

first citizen. All the power he was to employ he 
was to employ as a man. And yet he had been 
acting on the assumption that all power was given 
unto him in heaven and in earth ; for he had set 
before himself the mightiest achievement of all 
the history of the universe, and he had resisted 
two temptations to call in an outside power which 
he believed he had at his command. 

The first two temptations, for we follow the 
order of Matthew as the truest to life, were temp- 
tations to do that which would either destroy or 
belittle his belief in his own sonship. The third 
is calculated to lead him so to exalt his sonship 
as to ignore God and put himself wholly in God's 
place. This was a temptation to the worst form 
of apostasy. But there was that in Jesus which 
was quick to detect what was the mystery of the 
evil that thus stood before him. He saw that 
what was proposed was nothing else than unfilial 
conduct ; it was that the son should gather together 
the portion of goods that falleth to him, — his 
own goods, of which the father cannot rightfully 
deprive him, — and turn away from his father, as 
though no other relations henceforth subsisted be- 
tween them. If any man had offered a true son 
such an insulting suggestion as that he turn his 
back upon his father, could we think the right 
answer would be much else than a blow in the 
face ? And if the suggestion came from no indi- 
vidual man, but from the whole evil concourse of 



70 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

that " world power that makes for unrighteous- 
ness," could the Son of God have been worthy of 
himself if any belittling philosophy had in any 
way unfitted him for delivering with unreserved 
energy the personal retort, " Get thee behind me, 
Satan?" 

While, therefore, the Son of God overcame the 
lower and lesser temptations out of loyalty to his 
brother men, and to what he believed to be the 
laws of his father's material and spiritual universe, 
the last and supreme temptation he conquered by 
virtue of the quick instinct of filial devotion which 
resents insult to the person of that father. There 
came a moment when the noblest conceivable of 
human-divine motives was needed. Such a motive 
did not fail the Son of Man, because he had lived 
his life all these thirty years in obedience to it. 
To each one of us will surely come, once at least 
in our careers, such a crisis of temptation as that 
nothing but that noblest and humanest and divinest 
instinct, which instantaneously resents insult to a 
loved one, can avail to save us from apostasy. Are 
we living such lives as shall nurture in us the 
spirit of divine sonship against that day ? For it 
is not the ideal, the theory, the doctrine, that can 
mobilize the forces of personality quickly enough 
to resist the onset of temptation. The spirit alone 
can do it. Except a man be born of the spirit of 
divine sonship he cannot be ready for the supreme 
crisis. 



PRAYER. 

After this manner therefore pray ye, Our Father. — Matt. 
vi. 9. 

Prayer may perhaps be regarded as that which 
is most distinctively human. It is almost the only 
human function which is not claimed, in its rudi- 
ments at least, for some lower animal. But unless 
the cringing of the dog or the bleating of the sheep 
for the shepherd be a case in point, which can 
hardly be admitted, man alone prays. With men 
prayer is practically universal, those who do not 
pray being exceptional products either of degrada- 
tion or of culture. " There have been cities," says 
an ancient historian, " without walls, cities without 
armies, without kings or governments, cities with- 
out markets or commerce, or books or arts. But 
there have been no cities without places of prayer." 
This accords with the modern assertion that only 
where the religious sentiment has done its part 
has man progressed from the animal to the human. 
The race has been so nurtured in prayer from time 
immemorial that if it be an irrational thing, 
founded upon error, the folly and the falsehood 



72 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

have become so interwoven with human nature 
that it is little else than a living tissue of lies. To 
cease this exercise for enough generations to elimi- 
nate its influence would be profoundly to change 
man's nature for better or for worse. He who 
believes that prayer is a hallucination, that it has 
no basis in actual relationships between man and 
the powers addressed, must expect such a revolu- 
tion. To those, on the other hand, who believe it 
has such a basis, the densest and stupidest fetichism 
appears to have in it a glimmer of the light which 
will shine more and more unto the perfect day. 

Prayer is a bona fide personal address, a saying 
of " Thou " to a person other and greater than 
human. It is therefore founded upon the convic- 
tion of the person who prays that he stands so 
related to such a person as to permit this address 
and render it effectual. He must believe that 
such a being exists, and that he is a responder to 
those who diligently seek him. If the belief be 
sincere, the prayer is genuine, whether the peti- 
tioner be in praying relationship with such a person 
or not. The fact that men pray is not of itself 
evidence that such a person or relationship exists. 
It is, however, the admitted doctrine of modern 
times that truth will at some day prevail over 
error, and hence that, unless those relationships 
are actual, the belief in them will one day cease ; 
hence the question whether the world's praying- 
is or is not founded upon truth. No religious 



PBAYEB. 73 

culture can possibly preserve the habit of prayer 
if it be based upon anything else than fact. 

The claim of the gospel of Jesus is twofold : 
first, that it can put forward a conception of the 
relationship which exists between man and the 
" Power not himself," which represents that Power 
as both adorable and exorable, which permits 
and encourages and even demands prayer; and 
second, that this conception is not only unassail- 
able when on the defensive, but that it has con- 
vincing proof of a scientific order that it is the 
most nearly adequate and valid symbolic concep- 
tion ever broached. 

As to the conception itself, the idea of the 
universe being admitted, that of the unity of the 
power of which it is the exponent goes without 
argument. What that power is in itself, the power 
men call God, what is the mystery of its being, the 
gospel does not say, any more than it says what 
man is in the mystery of his being. What it 
does assert, however, is that these two mysterious 
beings, man and God, have such a kinship between 
them that their relationship to each other can in 
no other way be so well named as by the terms 
" father " and " child." Whether God be a person 
we do not ask any more than we stop to consider 
what a person is. The gospel only affirms that, 
whatever personality may be, whatever God and 
man may be, the interplay of the forces which 
are called personal, as manifested in the normal 



74 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

relationship of father and child, is involved in the 
relationship between God and man. 

This conception makes room for that infinite 
distance between God and man which so pro- 
foundly impresses all whose minds dwell upon the 
subject. Between the man with power and know- 
ledge and wide range of interest, and the infant 
whose face is breaking into its first intelligent 
smile, the distance is well-nigh immeasurable, 
though it in no way destroys the genuineness of 
the kinship between them. The gracious conde- 
scension of the one and the growth of the other 
bring them ever nearer together, until the equality, 
which in kind was from the first, begins to appear 
even in degree. Toward the Infinite Father our 
path is to be trodden in the same way the child 
treads the path toward equality with the human 
parent. The distance between the full-grown man 
and the Infinite Father is greater in comparison 
than that between the human father and the infant 
of weeks ; a distance to be bridged, not by com- , 
prehension, but by apprehension and infantile trust, 
yet one across which faith and love cross readily, 
as the power of gravitation crosses celestial spaces. 
The attitude of the wisest man toward God must 
be similar to that of the youngest child toward its 
parent ; it must be childlike. In this conception 
there is room for all of modern agnosticism, except 
that which despairs of the Unknowable. Who- 
ever trusts, not despairingly, but lovingly and 



PBAYEE. 75 

optimistically trusts the Unknowable, may be an 
agnostic and yet find room for prayer. 

There is room likewise in this conception for 
all of modern agnosticism, for all of that faith in 
the indefinite growth of knowledge which gives so 
much elasticity to the world to-day. The only 
thing removed from the bound of possible know- 
ledge is the mystery of being itself. This belongs 
to man as well as to God, and the fact that it does 
so is one of the suggestions of kinship between 
them. All other knowledge, by virtue again of 
their kinship, belongs alike to God and to man, 
and hence no limit is fixed to the acquisition of 
knowledge by man, as he grows in his likeness to 
his Divine Father. This age will not be content 
with any conception of man which does not permit 
of the unlimited expansion of human knowledge 
in every direction. This Christian conception of 
the gospel leaves all the room the age asks. 

It makes place also for the modern idea of the 
complete uniformity and continuity of natural law 
to as high a degree as it is possible for human 
powers to carry generalization. In the nature of 
inductive logic generalizations can never be quite 
complete. If this be thought of as the only limit 
to them, which seems to be the demand of the 
modern mind, then the world must be thought of 
as practically infinite. The conception of an Infi- 
nite Father, whose children are growing indefi- 
nitely into likeness to him, seems to demand, at 



76 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

least to make possible, the thought of a practically 
infinite universe as a home for them. 

Yet this conception demands that this mighty 
universe be only a means to an end ; that not things 
but persons be made ends in themselves; and 
that all the uniformity and continuity of natural 
law, instead of fettering the interplay of personal 
forces and the cherishing of personal intimacies, 
only render more easy and secure such fellowship. 
What language needs, to render it a sure and 
ready medium of expression, is a certain uniform- 
ity, and even rigidity of structure. Only when it 
has attained to that is it fit for classic literature, 
fit to become the embodiment of the world mind. 
Likewise no more uniformity or rigidity of struc- 
ture is found in the nature of things than is needed 
to make it a fit ground for the noblest and most 
permanent personal relationships. Upon the basis 
of uniformity and rigidity, arranged in multitudi- 
nous combinations, and with the help of that small 
fraction of original creative impulse which we 
men are conscious of possessing, but which forever 
eludes the retort of science, human relationships 
flourish, and find nature's fixedness a charter of 
freedom rather than an edict of repression. Like- 
wise through the uniformity of nature, rather than 
in spite of it, man may be thought of as hold- 
ing unrestrained personal intercourse with his 
Divine Father. 

The fixedness of nature gives to God a classic 



PRAYER. 77 

tongue wherewith to speak to man rather than 
a jargon. This makes room for prayer and its 
answers without resort on one hand to crude mira- 
cles, or on the other to the fatal notion of a pre- 
determined harmony between the prayer and its 
answer, which idea, once realized, would mark the 
petitioner as a slave or idiot. If fatherhood be 
the fundamental characteristic of Godhood, then 
the service of God's children is the chief end of 
nature, and fitness for this service as a household 
arrangement is its fundamental law. So the whole 
creation must be thought of as plastic, responding 
to the touch of parental love, answering the cries 
of children, so that, if need be, the very units of 
measurement, by which uniformity is determined 
in the laboratory, shall shorten and lengthen as 
the ends of love may require. Why should not 
the universe, with its pulsations coming from the 
heart of the Eternal, feel the influence of the beat- 
ing hearts and the eager desires of his children ? 
And if it does, or if it does not, who can deter- 
mine ? The units of measure employed by science 
are themselves all relative. It is possible, within 
the limits of this conception, for man and God to 
talk together and interchange services without in 
any way upsetting the work of exact science. 

It is true that this idea of the divine father- 
hood discourages that kind of prayer which defies 
and despises natural uniformities. An established 
uniformity is probably the expression of a settled 



78 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

and hence wise economy on the part of the Father, 
and is in ordinary circumstances to be cheerfully 
acquiesced in or reckoned with. To the truly fil- 
ial mind it will appear that the uniform fact that 
certain substances are antidotes to arsenic should 
suggest that the Father meant them to be so used, 
and that He did not wish to be importuned to pro- 
duce the results in other ways when they were not 
at hand. It is the part of a spoiled child to insist 
upon the setting aside of the order of the house- 
hold for trivial cause ; not but that he may some- 
times have his way ; for one of the methods of 
the wise parent in dealing with his children is to 
let them have their own spoiled way as a form of 
discipline. A child may be permitted to eat itself 
sick, and the household economy may be such as 
to seem to give this permission to the willful child 
who insists upon it. An answer to prayer is there- 
fore not to be always interpreted as a mark of the 
divine favor. The psalmist says that when the 
Israelites petulantly demanded flesh in the wilder- 
ness, Jehovah gave them their request, but sent 
leanness into their souls. The machinery of re- 
tributive or, at least, of disciplinary punishment is 
set in operation in that case by prayer; and if we 
can see that machinery occasionally working in 
sight, we are not forbidden to infer that it also 
works out of sight. The evidences for prayer from 
the answers to it which can be recorded are for 
this reason to be discounted. Only that prayer 



PRAYER. 79 

can be truly said to touch the divine heart which 
is uttered in the truly filial spirit ; and such prayer 
is not watching to test itself by what it can discern 
of the answer. The conscious ignorance of the 
petitioner and the infinite wisdom of the Father 
are such that the filial spirit forbids insistence 
upon an answer in exact terms. 

Yet here we must not harshly discourage the 
importunity and simplicity of prayer. God, as a 
true father, loves to hear the prattle of his children 
so long as they are truly childlike, no matter how 
ignorant they may be. Ignorance must be no bar 
of approach to God, else his fatherhood is imper- 
fect. Sometimes we are tempted to cease to pray, 
because we are certain that God knows better than 
we do what is for our good. This would be a mis- 
take. The true idea of father and child makes 
room for an infinite parental delight in the sound 
of children's voices and the awakening of children's 
independent desires, even though they ask what 
cannot be granted. The parent is not annoyed 
nor discouraged because the child asks for the 
moon. We must let the idea of the divine father- 
hood have full sweep. 

Yet we could not continue to prattle to God if 
we were so highly and mightily philosophical as to 
think of Him as giving no weight at all to what 
we say, — as patronizingly enjoying the music of 
our voices without letting them influence his mind 
a particle. Nothing will more certainly hush the 



80 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

childish voice and chill its spirit, than to be con- 
vinced that the parent is in no way moved by it 
in the direction it is meant to move him. But if 
we be God's children, we are children, like Him, 
with incipient wills and intelligence, entitled to and 
doubtless receiving from Him their due measure 
of respect. My own father was a better father 
than God, unless God began very early in my life 
to let his decisions concerning me hinge largely 
upon what I wished Him to do ; not because He 
might not have known better, but because it was 
better for the development of my manhood that 
He should place responsibilities upon me. Jesus 
spoke as a representative man when he said, " As 
the Father hath life in himself, so hath He given 
to the Son to have life in himself, and hath given 
him authority " — to use his own judgment. When 
the Pharisees accused him of having made himself 
equal with God, he not only did not deny it, but 
replied with a Scripture text meant to show that 
in a sense all men were gods. A certain species 
of equality with God is involved in being his chil- 
dren, and this involves the right of self-assertion. 
It takes a person, a self, to pray as well as to be 
prayed to. He who prays must say " I " as well 
as "thou." Until the sense of sonship as recip- 
rocal to that of fatherhood is awakened in a man 
he cannot pray. That is why the cringing of the 
dog is not prayer. He has not " said that I am I." 
Abraham was not less but more the friend of God 



PRAYER. 81 

when he stood up in the ardor of importunate inter- 
cession and demanded, " Shall not the Judge of 
all the earth do right ? " Prayer does not depend 
upon that slavish sense of absolute dependence 
which throws itself without thought or choice upon 
God, and proposes to lose its will in his. It is loy- 
alty, not servility, bowing at the last to his superior 
authority ; that is the true meaning of that word 
of Jesus, "Not my will but thine be done." What- 
ever is lawful for me to strive for is lawful to pray 
for. And those who have acted most strenuously 
have always prayed most sincerely. 

There are times when God, if He be like the best 
earthly parent, will be touched and moved by even 
insane and seemingly willful importunity. Shall 
I pray for the recovery of a loved one afflicted 
with what science calls a fatal disease ? Well, in 
the first place, the judgments of science are never 
quite absolute, and in the second place if love con- 
strains, real love, and not mere selfish desire or 
disregard of divine wisdom, — if love so sweeps 
reason and will off its feet that I cry out and hold 
on in the face of all evidence of what may be 
God's will, — I think He will be very tender toward 
me. God, if He is like Jesus (and we teach that 
He is, more than like any one else), is tender 
toward the mistakes which are made through love. 
But it must be real love, not passion ; it must be 
simple, not reflex. It will not do to look in the 
glass at such a time and felicitate ourselves on 



82 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

having been so importunate. The parent knows 
the full difference between the simple and earnest 
and sincere protest of the child, sure it is right, 
although for the time so bereft of reason that it 
is even rebellious and insulting, and the willful 
and spoiled protest. He treats the two in very- 
different ways. Where the mind of the true, fun- 
damentally obedient child underlies, there is no 
limit to the rightful importunity of prayer. Where 
it does not, God must exercise discipline. 

In brief, this conception of the fatherhood of 
God and the childhood of man, of the law of the 
household as the supreme law of the universe, 
needs only to be fully grasped and developed in 
all its possible applications to bring prayer to a 
position where it is unassailable by the criticism 
of science. Wherever science threatens the over- 
throw of any particular belief concerning prayer, 
its criticism may be anticipated by applying to 
that belief a more nearly perfected conception of 
the right relation of father and child and of a 
household unison. Or where such belief has been 
already destroyed by science, its destruction has 
only contributed to a more nearly perfected con- 
ception of prayer. Whatever current ideas of 
prayer are really anti-scientific, they are so because 
they are not adjusted to the ideal of fatherhood 
and childhood. Science has done excellent service 
in forcing the refinement of such ideas. In other 
cases the spirit of Jesus, who made no mistakes 



PBAYEB. 83 

in this matter, has brought about the refinement 
by introducing the filial temper without the knife 
of criticism. When science has made all the crit- 
icism possible it still leaves prayer in the spirit of 
Jesus unassailed. It is unassailable. 

To many minds this appears to be the supreme 
advantage in the Christian idea, and they are satis- 
fied with it. They are glad they can perch high 
enough to be out of the range of hostile weapons. 
To them the so-called warfare of science against 
Christianity has been the driving of the latter from 
one. branch to another until, now securely swinging 
on the topmost, it finds it can no longer be dis- 
turbed, and again puts its head under its wing and 
goes to sleep. It is not a militant bird. It has no 
thought of taking the aggressive. It will cackle 
in triumph simply because it has saved its neck. 

It is true that some consent to occupy this de- 
fensive attitude under protest, because it is the 
best they can do. 

But Christianity ought not to be content with a 
position which is simply unassailable. If it is, it 
has sold its birthright, that of the Israelitish ex- 
pectation of a king who should lead a movement 
of world conquest. The gospel must undertake 
to fulfill that expectation. It must affirm that its 
idea of the relation of God and man is not only 
unassailable, but that the forward movement of 
science, instead of merely failing to dethrone it, 
must enthrone it. It declares not only that the 



84 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

future man may pray, but that he must. " Every 
knee shall bow " ■ — " in the name of Jesus." 
That last is the key to its aggressive campaign. 
Science asks for facts. The gospel puts Jesus 
forward as a fact, and demands of science what it 
will do with him as a fact. It asks science to say 
whether it can deal with him under any other work- 
ing theory than that of the fatherhood of God, and 
the sonship of man. It challenges the attempt. 

It asks science whether it can account for Jesus 
in any way which shall not acknowledge him as 
the crown of human history, the flower of human 
development. It claims that measured, not by 
metaphysics, but by the purely inductive method, 
Jesus is the preponderatingly significant fact in 
the known universe, and, hence, the key to the 
sort of symbol one shall use to express an adequate 
attitude toward the inscrutable power behind that 
universe. The universe is to be judged by its 
specific product, as we judge a tree by its specific 
fruit, not by its accidental galls and warts. Now 
the specific fruit of this universe, so far as we 
know it, — and we know enough to see not a chaos, 
but a universe, — its final product, is the human 
race. And the specific, the conquering, surviving 
product of the human race, worked out in organic 
courses of history, is Jesus the Christ. He, there- 
fore, is the unique, the characteristic fruit, the be- 
gotten of the Eternal Power behind things ; and 
that Eternal is to be thought of in such terms as 



PBAYEB. 85 

are borrowed from Jesus the Christ. From the 
point of view of the universe, the sum of things, 
Jesus is the supreme manifestation of its meaning, 
and, hence, of whatever may be known of the 
mystery which it conceals. Hence, except that he 
is a derived being, the underived Eternal reality 
is more like Jesus than like anything else con- 
ceived. It alone is self-existent ; he is a derived 
existence like ourselves. It must therefore be 
thought of as the Source, that is, the Father of 
Jesus, — a worthy Father of such a son. But if 
the Eternal be worthy to be thought of as the 
Father of Jesus, it must be thought of as approach- 
able by every childlike being ; for he was ; and he 
is not greater than that out of which he came. 
Thus science, seeking the supremely specific and 
hence supremely significant fact in the known 
universe, will, we allege, one day, and at no dis- 
tant day, point to Jesus as the being whose nature 
lends meaning to the Eternal itself, and not only 
warrants but proves the validity of the conception 
of that power as the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

From another point of view, equally scientific 
and making a more practical appeal to life, Jesus 
vindicates the conception of a Father who is to be 
prayed to. Science is vindicating not only the 
claim that Jesus occupies the supreme place in 
human history, but the further claim that he occu- 
pies it by right of what he actually is : that he is 



86 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

the normal man. If he be the normal man, then 
his attitude toward the inscrutable Power is most 
nearly the normal one. Now that attitude was 
one of filial trust, and this was not an occasional 
or incidental attitude, but one which was an essen- 
tial part of his whole personality. He would not 
have been the man he was if he had held any 
other attitude. His very personal identity was 
fixed in that way. Of his own self, he declared, 
he could do nothing. He was so identified with 
the Father that they were one. He would not 
have constituted a unit, but only a fragment, with- 
out the Father, so close was the relationship 
between them. Now he who would lead a normal 
life must live the Christ-life : and he who would 
do that must be like Jesus, not independent of 
the Supreme Being, but relative to Him, a son, 
whose life is whole only as it is identified with 
God, so that he is a mere fragment apart from 
that relationship. 

This, then, is the gospel which we preach ; not 
merely that we may say, " Our Father," and have 
an ideal of human relationship to the divine which 
no man can successfully gainsay, but that the 
development of the universe from primitive fire- 
mist, or whatever was primitive in producing the 
human race, and the development of human his- 
tory in producing Jesus, have shown that there is 
no genuine or complete manhood which does not 
say, " Our Father " in the spirit of Jesus Christ. 



VI. 

THE GOLDEN RULE. 

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them 
likewise. — Luke vi. 31. 

This verse begins with " and," showing that in 
the mind of the writer, at least, it formed part of the 
more extended discourse in which it has its setting. 
This in turn had its occasion in circumstances 
which are not obscurely hinted at. Jesus' atten- 
tion had doubtless been called to the feud between 
his countrymen and the foreign soldiery which 
kept them in subjection. Wanton abuse and 
insult, petty oppression and robbery, were the lot 
of the conquered people ; and it was not strange 
that against the oppressor and all his agents the 
bitterest hatred should be cherished, the most 
uncharitable judgments formed, and the most use- 
less and suicidal resistance frequently made. It 
was intolerably humiliating to the honest and in- 
nocent citizen, trained as a Jew to a sense of his 
rights, to receive an unprovoked blow given in the 
insolence of power, which could be resented only 
at the peril of life. It was certainly outrageous 
that any soldier who happened to be chilly or 



88 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

lazy might take his coat or impress him as a 
beast of burden. The sensitiveness of a proud but 
unfortunate people naturally inferred that both 
the soldier and his government were prompted by 
malice. 

In the light of a calm philosophy, however, like 
that of Epictetus, this judgment is seen to be 
hasty. The Eoman government was not deliber- 
ately cruel. Even toward the Jew who so tried its 
patience, it cherished no ill feeling. It extermi- 
nated him when it had to exterminate, for the sake, 
not of revenge, but of policy. It neither loved 
nor hated. It was as soulless as a modern trust. 
Like that it simply ruled and collected revenue, 
using for that purpose such mercy or such ruthless- 
ness as was likely to be most effective. It bought 
its common soldiers in the cheapest market ; and 
that they were fierce and brutal to civilians was an 
incident of their efficiency in war. 

The soldiers themselves were no more malicious 
than the government. They were such men as 
the age produced for the place, and their brutality 
had no worse motive than thoughtless selfishness ; 
while to their victims it appeared as though both 
they and their masters were moved by diabolical 
hatred, and merited the bitterest feeling in return. 
And this rankling hatred in the hearts of the 
oppressed against the oppressor was the cause of 
more than half their misery. 

The task, set for the Messiah by popular ex- 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 89 

pectation, of delivering the Jews from political 
servitude, Jesus had declined. Unsophisticated as 
he may have been, his instincts warned him that a 
political deliverance would have been at that time 
a deceitful boon, and that the first thing necessary, 
and the only thing feasible, was to undertake to 
impart a moral superiority, which should make 
any other yoke than that of sin seem trifling. 
Heavy certainly were the taxes, the insults many 
times harder to bear, and the robberies and im- 
pressings most humiliating and exasperating. But 
the spirit in which they were received made them 
tenfold worse. If only a more reasonable, not to 
say a sweeter, spirit could be infused, the poison 
in the sting of political servitude would be neutral- 
ized, present unavoidable evils might be borne, 
and the future awaited with patience and hope. 
If the feeling of insult and exasperation could be 
removed, an unprovoked blow would hurt no more 
than any other, and even its repetition could be 
invited without shrinking. It was bad to be struck 
on one cheek. But even mere philosophers had 
learned how to turn the other. It was hard to 
lose one's coat. It was worse to be warmed ever 
afterward by the fires of resentment. Better let 
the cloak go too. Better submit to twice the 
injustice, if one can thereby so conquer self as to 
cease blaming for a devil the robber who is only a 
brute, and only imperfectly responsible for being 
a brute. Philosophy alone, that is, reasonableness 



90 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

aside from sweetness, could so far allay hatred, 
and remove the sense of humiliation. It was easy 
enough to see, if we would but look with impartial 
eyes, that the government and soldiers were no 
more malicious than the seasons, which also in- 
flicted hardships ; and to accept the inevitable 
evils of foreign rule as one accepts the weather, 
without fretting or cherishing resentment. Stand- 
ing by itself, the maxim not to judge, that is not to 
attribute moral blame, is a dictate of philosophy. 
Consistently applied, it means the depersonification 
of God and man. To its eye sin is but a malady, 
and should excite no indignation. Conversely, 
holiness is a symptom of health, and should arouse 
no more moral admiration than beauty. Jesus as 
a Stoic philosopher might have laid down the rule, 
"Judge not." 

But Jesus was more than a Stoic philosopher. 
His doctrine had a flavor of something more vital 
than " philosophy " could give. It has been char- 
acterized by a great critic of our age as not only 
" reasonableness," but " sweet reasonableness." 
The sweetness was an ingredient of as much im- 
portance as the reasonableness. And this sweet- 
ness it was which forbade the inculcation of such 
moral indifferentism as would be involved in the 
depersonification of God and man, and the treat- 
ment of Roman government and soldiers as though 
they possessed no more moral character than the 
climate. It was the aim of Jesus not to banish 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 91 

the moral feelings, but to transform them. He 
would change hatred not into callousness, but into 
love. He would change life from sour not to 
insipid, but to sweet. The Stoic found life full of 
painful emotions, and knew no remedy but to 
empty it. Jesus had the secret of transmuting 
these emotions from bitter to blessed. And though 
it be a dark saying, if remembered it will one day 
emit a light of its own, that Jesus' power of renew- 
ing life without denying anything which rightly 
belongs to the emotional side of it has in it the 
prophecy of the resurrection. 

Jesus' injunction, therefore, not to judge, which 
is a part of this discourse wherein the so-called 
golden rule is imbedded, is itself to be judged in 
the light of its context, which also contains the 
injunction to love our enemies, and apparently to 
practice the rule of non-resistance. It seems to 
aim at more than to show the unreasonableness of 
hating men, and to seek to clear the way for loving 
them. But, the pharisee and moralist will ask, if 
we cannot judge, how shall we love more than 
hate? For if we cannot judge, we can neither 
approve nor condemn. Here comes in that tran- 
scendental philosophy of Jesus, whose principle is 
that love shall be bestowed not according;' to but 
independently of approval. Jesus loved men and 
inculcated love,' not because they were good or bad, 
but because we are the children of the Highest, 
whose attribute it is to be kind unto the unthank- 



92 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

fill and the evil. Iu some way, indeed, his love 
was like that of the Father, in that it embraced 
the bad more eagerly than the good, not because 
he liked their badness, but because he pitied their 
fallen condition. And then this higher philosophy 
transcends its own maxim of not judging, and at 
the prompting of love judges not that this or that 
man ought to be blamed, but that he needs to be 
saved. 

In the spirit of Jesus, therefore, we are, after 
all, enjoined to judge men, not that we may intelli- 
gently hate them, for we cannot do that : not even 
that we may intelligently love them, for love should 
precede intelligence ; but that we may intelligently 
serve them, and work for their highest good. This 
may perhaps be the sense in which it is true that 
" the saints shall judge the earth." Those whom 
Jesus warned not to judge had probably not made 
enough start in sainthood to warrant them in judg- 
ing ; and we should be careful with what motives 
we exercise that office. Until we love men we are 
not fit to judge them. Indeed, the judge who sits 
upon the bench of civil justice and the juryman in 
the box are the better equipped for their office if 
they love the men they have to deal with. You 
will get justice more frequently from such men. 
Love will not make the judgment less severe, 
though it make it more merciful ; its judgment 
will be with the merciful severity of the physician. 

And thus it is we find Jesus endeavoring to 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 93 

bring to bear upon the peculiarly distressing rela- 
tionships in which he found men the principles, not 
merely of ordinary Stoical philosophy, but of that 
transcendental philosophy of life which swayed his 
own mind, — the thought of the Supreme Being 
as Father, and hence of the normal relationships 
of men as those of a family. Accordingly the 
ideal human society, which he would fain see be- 
ginning to be realized there in Galilee, was to be 
founded upon this actually supreme fact of the 
univ r erse, which was only an extension of the su- 
preme fact of his childhood. N ow the supreme 
fact of his childhood, as of the childhood of most 
of us, was familyhood, which had conditioned and 
determined all his early life. To him believing, 
as he said, that the child held the true secret 
of humanity, it seemed that familyhood was the 
formula for expressing the supreme fact of the 
universe. Human society, therefore, to his mind, 
would harmonize with supreme fact, that is, with 
eternal truth and law, with the true conditions of 
success and survival, only when it realized family- 
hood. 

Now the law of familyhood is that love is be- 
stowed not in .proportion to but independently of 
merit. Indeed, love flows more lavishly where 
merit is wanting, as blood comes more freely to 
the diseased or wounded part, as though to heal 
the deficiency. The best rather than the worst 
construction is put upon the motives of an un- 



94 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

worthy member. If the head of the house is 
appealed to, it is not that he may punish, so much 
as that he may reform. The father does the best 
possible for each member ; and although the law of 
discipline may make it needful that he apportion 
favors according to merit, his love follows its own 
law, which is different. Even when a system of 
punishment seems to be retributive, it should be 
assumed, if its author is wise, that retribution is a 
means to restoration. And if the punishments of 
the Divine Father fail to restore the erring, it is 
not because they were not so designed, but because 
man, as himself a divine son, has the power, if he 
so chooses, to ruin himself in spite of the will of 
the Father. 

It was this principle of familyhood as the nor- 
mal social law, which Jesus boldly proclaimed, and 
aimed at introducing at once into Galilean society 
to sweeten the sources of life. It was useless to 
preach it to the soldiers. He was not in touch 
with them, both because of differences of language 
and nationality, and because they were successful 
aggressors, and it is seldom of use to preach to 
such. But to his countrymen he preached that 
they should receive the insolence of the soldiers 
as, in the large mixed family in which he had 
grown up, the injured members had learned to 
take the treatment of any who were disposed to do 
wrong, — with unlimited forbearance. 

As a touchstone to right action in these premises, 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 95 

lie enunciated the maxim, "As ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." In 
the light of this context the maxim becomes more 
luminous. It was not new. It had in substance 
been uttered many times before. But it had been 
a mere uncoordinated gem, one of many hundreds 
of moral aphorisms. Jesus places it in vital rela- 
tionships, so that it becomes an organic part of a 
new social philosophy. It was already in success- 
ful operation in thousands of instances, as the law 
of internal administration of so important an insti- 
tution as the home. He finds it there, and pro- 
poses to give it a universal validity by giving 
universal application to the home idea, the home 
motive, the home spirit. 

Administered in the home spirit, the maxim of 
doing as we would be done by has all the charac- 
teristics of a successful social law, with its tenden- 
cies both conservative and revolutionary, for society 
demands combined stability and progress. The 
maxim must be rationally applied ; no principle 
can bring anything but failure unless it is so 
applied. The fool is equally dangerous, whether 
his principles be good or bad. To be rationally 
applied it must be rationally comprehended, and it 
can be so comprehended only in view of that fun- 
damental idea of Jesus, that the human race is a 
household, with all the peculiar combinations of 
equalities and inequalities, and complex interrela- 
tionships which are found in the household. The 



96 THE IMPERIAL CHBIST. 

doctrine of human equality founded upon the idea 
of brotherhood differs from that founded upon the 
idea of men as a lot of manufactured articles, 
turned out by the machinery of impersonal nature, 
or struck off by the mint of a divine creative flat, 
as the Declaration of Independence, dominated by 
eighteenth-century deism, probably meant to assert. 
The idea of divine-human familyhood implies an 
infinite diversity of characteristics, so that no 
intelligent man can presume to make his mind the 
exact measure of another man's. It suggests the 
fact of different stages of growth, and of all kinds 
of mutual interdependences and interresponsibili- 
ties. It suggests that we may be responsible, not 
only for what we do to others, but for what they 
do to us, and for what they would wish to do or to 
have done. It forbids us to interpret the maxim, 
as it is often interpreted, that we should do to 
others as we wish they would do to us, or as they 
wish we would do to them. It is not what we wish, 
but what we should wish if we were in their place ; 
and not only that, but what we should wish if we 
were in their place without losing all our present 
advantages of wisdom and point of view. For 
both we and they are children, sometimes spoiled 
and bad children. 

The man when a child did not wish to be pun- 
ished for his faults ; when he became a man, he 
wished he had been punished. Now he proposes 
to punish his child ; and when it does not wish to 



THE GOLDEN BULE. 97 

be punished, he persists, knowing that the day will 
come when it will thank him. Putting himself in 
the place of the child, he does not so do it as to 
revert to his childish unwisdom, but retaining his 
maturer sense he asks, " Now if I were a child, 
and knew as much as I do, what should I choose ? " 
What we would others should do for us should be 
determined by the highest considerations before 
we reverse this rule to determine what we should 
do toward them. The elder brother must deter- 
mine his action to his younger brother by what he 
would morally justify a still older brother in doing 
to him. The wise man must act toward the foolish, 
not as he would have the foolish act toward him, 
but as he would justify a still wiser in acting. 
The good man must deal with the bad in the light 
of the fact that there is One in the sight of whom 
his own righteousness is as filthy rags. The strong 
must so treat the weak as he would have the Al- 
mighty treat him. The maxim points ever upward, 
not downward, and ends nowhere short of the per- 
fect ideal in the Godhead. In practical every-day 
use it is meant to afford a ready appeal from a 
selfish and hence biased tribunal to an unbiased 
one, as the surveyor by reversal of his leveler cor- 
rects or detects any suspected error in it. 

In his self-respecting moods, no man desires his 
neighbor to submit to be robbed by him ; it is not 
therefore of the essence of this rule that he should 
submit to be robbed. The principle of non-resist- 



98 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

ance is not of the essence of the Golden Rule. In 
his better moments each man wishes that if ever 
he becomes an aggressor, he may meet with resist- 
ance both for his own sake and for the sake of 
others ; that if he becomes an oppressor, he may 
be met with insurrection ; that if, overcome by his 
baser nature, he attempts outrage or seduction, he 
may fail, if necessary, at the point of the pistol or 
at the loss of life. It would be better, and he 
knows it. He is therefore justified in resisting 
these things. There is nothing in the principles 
of Jesus forbidding a war of resistance to tyranny, 
nothing forbidding legal contests, nothing forbid- 
ding conflicts on occasion between capital and 
labor, nothing forbidding the operation, under pro- 
per restrictions, of the element of competition in 
business. 

There are doubtless many cases of wrong, where 
the evils of resistance are worse than those of non- 
resistance, as in those to which Jesus directly 
refers ; even, as in the same cases, where the moral 
resistance is in exact proportion to physical non- 
resistance. Non-resistance may be a form of re- 
sistance of the highest efficiency. Doubtless in 
thousands of instances all down the history of the 
world the true practical application of the Golden 
Rule would have involved the subordinate maxim 
of non-resistance. It would have prevented num- 
berless wars. 

There is a weakness and narrowness in mere 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 99 

maxim-following, which is illustrated in the sects 
founded upon the principle of non-resistance and 
refusal to engage in political action. The non- 
resistant principles of Jesus were uttered in view 
of special cases : The maxim is a special applica- 
tion of that of doing as we would be done by. 
Given the special circumstances, it holds ; outside 
these circumstances, it fails to hold. 

Indeed, this is true of all maxims. Maxims are 
made for men, not men for maxims. A maxim is 
a tentative embodiment for practical purposes of a 
law too elusive to be clearly grasped in a practical 
formula. The common law of our system of juris- 
prudence, itself intangible, takes shape in certain 
legal maxims, useful for every-day practice, but 
the letter of which must be again and again tran- 
scended by the spirit of the law. The common law 
of the social system which Jesus is creating is love, 
itself indeterminate, and needing to take practical 
shape in maxims. But no maxim can practically 
cover all the ground ; and even this greatest of 
them would become infinitely complicated in opera- 
tion, if love could not at times overleap it and 
reach its mark by short cuts. 

While, therefore, in all our every-day concerns 
we steadily apply it, we need so to cherish the 
spirit of the law behind it that emergencies shall 
not leave us hopelessly entangled in the details of 
legalism, but shall find us ready to act unerringly 
by pure instinct. This instinct becomes more 



100 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

necessary in these days, because society has become 
so complex, that no one dares to reckon the effect 
of anything he does with sole reference to himself 
and the other partner to the transaction. In my 
direct dealing with one person there are always 
involved important indirect dealings with others, 
many of them readily calculated, and others incal- 
culable. If, therefore, I am to act with considera- 
tion, my calculations must take a wide range. The 
employer and the employee cannot, though they 
try, deal with one another only. Each is so situ- 
ated that he represents the interests of many. 
The employer who gives higher wages than the 
business will warrant brings disaster, not only on 
himself and his stockholders, but on the employees 
who receive the wages, and he demoralizes the 
general market. And if the employee accepts 
lower wages than he need to accept, he deranges 
the labor market and brings down the general 
scale ; and so long as he continues to accept reduc- 
tions, the scale will keep falling, forced by the 
laws of trade. No man hireth to himself ; no man 
is hired to himself ; all belong together. 

So the principle, not merely of a rational selfish- 
ness, but of a rational unselfishness, may require 
every man to make the best possible bargain, and 
to employ whatever lawful and honorable means 
are feasible to make the best bargain, in buying 
and selling his goods or his labor. In itself con- 
sidered, there is no moral wrong in a pool or 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 101 

trust or union of capital or of labor. The wrong 
comes in when power thus gained is used despot- 
ically beyond the limits of fair bargaining; or 
when despotisms thus attempted are supinely per- 
mitted, because the individual citizen has not 
enough public spirit to inform himself how easily 
the remedies may be applied, or sufficient moral 
courage to apply those remedies. The anthracite 
coal combination is less the product of criminal 
tyranny on the part of the men who control it, than 
of criminal ignorance and carelessness on the part 
of the public which permits itself to be robbed : 
the strong members of society who might put an 
end to the evil being bribed into acquiescence, 
because the burden falls chiefly on the weaker 
members, aud because they themselves manage 
on the whole to share in similar plunder of one 
sort or other. The most important application 
of the Golden Rule in these days would be in its 
application to the strong and intelligent, who, 
while they do not directly oppress the weaker and 
more ignorant, stand by and see them oppressed. 
The Samaritan's action rebuked not the thieves 
who robbed and beat the man so much as the 
priest and the Levite, who would never be guilty 
of such a crime, but who passed him by on the 
other side. 

Throughout the centuries, however, circum- 
stances have been more and more conditioned by 
the spirit of Jesus, so that the duty and necessity 



102 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

of resistance to evil have been growing more rare, 
and the privilege of non-resistance more common, 
until to-day the eyes of the world, weary of strife, 
sick of war and contention, turn with inexpres- 
sible longing and a prophetic hope toward the 
consummation of the era of Jesus, when the motive 
which now rules in the ideal household and in 
myriads of actual ones shall rule in society at 
large, when the word brotherhood shall belong, not 
to the phrase-makers only, but also to the practi- 
cal law-makers and institution-builders. If each 
of us who recognizes the authority of Jesus were 
to do, not our pro rata share, but all we can, the 
end would come almost at once. More impossible 
each day is it becoming for any man to live to 
himself or to die to himself. "Whether it will or 
no, the race is being forced to live in the most 
intimate family relationships, and to develop some 
kind of family motives. The question is no longer 
whether it shall be a family, but whether it shall 
be the family of God or the family of the devil, 
whether earth shall be a heaven or a hell. Politi- 
cal, industrial, commercial, social institutions of 
all kinds represent the realization of the family 
law in the world, the growth of the corporate life 
as distinct from mere individualism. As this cor- 
porate life becomes more pervasive, the importance 
of the spirit which vivifies these institutions in- 
creases. So difficult is it longer for the individual 
to ignore the social, that the question is becoming 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 103 

imperative whether these institutions embody the 
spirit of a God or the spirit of a devil. The only 
spirit which the world will ever recognize as that 
of a God is the spirit of Jesus. Never before did 
the world so sincerely confess that its institutions 
ought to embody the spirit of Jesus. Never be- 
fore did it so realize that they do not. Never be- 
fore was it so ready to believe that they might. 
Never before was it so near to the Kingdom of 
God. 



VII. 

JESUS AND MODEKN HELLENISM. 
Sir, we would see Jesus. — John xii. 21. 

The courtesy of this request, like the request 
itself, was characteristic of the men who preferred 
it. They were Greeks, who happened to be among 
the concourse of people who had come up to Jeru- 
salem to the Jewish feast ; business men, perhaps, 
there to take advantage of the trading opportu- 
nities of the great gathering; much more proba- 
bly, however, proselytes, embracing, eagerly or 
desperately, the Jewish hope of a Messiah. A 
truly notable phenomenon was this of the proselyte, 
a man whose whole attitude of soul was as though 
he were asking to see Jesus. Belonging to a once 
great but now decaying, despairing, conscienceless 
civilization, he was the man who was anxious to 
come to the knowledge of any way to escape from 
spiritual desolation, and, notwithstanding the con- 
tempt of the world of culture, was willing to ac- 
cept the optimism of the Jewish creed, which 
affirmed the promise of a deliverer. 

In some respects the prosery te might be more 
predisposed toward Jesus than the born Israelite. 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. 105 

To the Israelite hope was hereditary, but too 
often for this reason it was but an empty, formal 
hope, not at all an answer to the cry of heart and 
flesh for the living God. It was not possible for 
the proselyte to be a mere traditionalist, for he 
had already been compelled to part company with 
the beautiful legends and fascinating speculations 
which were the traditions of his fathers. In turn- 
iog away from honored and cherished beliefs, to 
accept a despised faith, he had cast in his lot with 
a race of social and political pariahs. He never 
could have done this had he not known the gnaw- 
ings of soul-hunger. Judaism would hardly at- 
tract any Greek who was not endowed with a high 
order of spiritual appetency. The same cravings, 
therefore, which had brought him as far as Juda- 
ism were fitted to carry him on toward the Christ. 
Having believed Moses in no traditional or con- 
ventional way, but because of a real grasp of the 
ground truth to which Moses bears witness, he was 
ready to believe Jesus. And since a genuine 
spiritual longing does not quiet or set aside, but 
rather awakens and quickens the best mental 
powers and shows them how to find the most di- 
rect paths to truth, it is not strange that those 
Greeks sought to see Jesus. For being Greeks, 
they were natural and skillful truth-seekers, and in 
becoming proselytes they came under no obliga- 
tions to pursue the methods in vogue among the 
Jews, for determining what was to be believed. 



106 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

Tliese methods would seem to a Greek to be nei- 
ther necessary nor natural nor rational. There 
was too much instinctive critical intelligence in 
the Greek mind to permit it to take up with mere 
rabbinical Judaism. It had come to Judaism 
rather because it sought aid in the exercise of the 
God-vision. And it was likewise concerned to 
know him who was reputed to have come from 
God. When he was within reach, they would 
bring their powers of discernment to bear directly 
upon him. They would see Jesus. 

It would not be consistent with the Hellenistic 
culture in which they had been reared to permit 
the self-elected rulers of Jewish thought to de- 
termine the exact contents of their beliefs. What- 
ever else it had done for Greece, the death of 
Socrates had established the principle of intel- 
lectual liberty, and every Greek was his own 
thinker with, if anything, too scant respect for the 
authority of scribes. For the same reason the 
Greek had learned how little heed should be given 
to popular clamor, even when it did not, if ever it 
did not, merely reflect the prejudices of the dic- 
tators of thought, translated into the dialect and 
cleverly uttered through the mouth of the unthink- 
ing populace. They might hear much truth con- 
cerning Jesus from all classes, but between fair 
statement and distorted misrepresentation their 
own judgments must determine. Mere hearsay 
knowledge of anything really worth knowing about 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. 107 

would not satisfy a conscientious Greek; while 
second-hand knowledge of Jesus, said to be the 
Messiah, would not be enough for a proselyte who 
was watching keenly for the realization of Israel's 
hope, and, having followed his independent judg- 
ment out of heathenism into Judaism, must have 
felt entitled to continue its exercise in pursuing 
the logic of Judaism to its end. They must see 
Jesus. 

It would be scarcely worth our while to note 
the efforts of these Greeks to come into personal 
intercourse with Jesus, if they were an odd or 
exceptional class of persons. But although it is a 
purely fanciful notion which imagines that this 
incident has been invented by some Hellenizing 
author of this Gospel to typify the attitude of the 
Greek mind toward Jesus, it is probably true that 
it was recalled and recorded as an illustration of a 
fact which afterward became of wide dimensions 
and much importance, — the way in which the 
stream of proselytism, which had been setting into 
Judaism, was turned away to the new cult, as we 
know it was. 

The Greek proselyte stands for an enduring 
type more numerous to-day than it ever was, and 
constituting in our complex life an element whose 
importance we cannot afford to ignore, and whose 
excellences we can but admire. Broad and cos- 
mopolitan in its intelligence and culture, it knows 
what the world as a whole is thinking of; per- 



108 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

ceives the Zeit-Geist as a manifest spiritual po- 
tency successively solving doubts, and starting 
deeper ones to take their place and thus send the 
fathoming plummet down farther into life's mys- 
teries. It is awakened from dogmatic slumber, 
emancipated from the bondage of traditionalism, 
has cut loose from conventionalism in belief, works 
in the harness of no party, and wears the blinders 
of no system. It knows the flimsiness of much 
solemn argumentation, the unconscious humor in 
many courses of lectures, the hollowness of many 
loud professions, the naive hypocrisy of much 
sanctimonious behavior. It knows the color of 
the false fires of sectarianism upon our altars. It 
has measured the force of the attacks which have 
been made upon cherished dogmas, and the weak- 
ness of their defenses. It understands the crush- 
ing logic of pessimism, and it is with a languid 
interest that it cuts the leaves of the latest trea- 
tise in defense of faith, if it thinks worth while 
cutting them at all, — so much rubbish has it 
waded through to no purpose. The Hellenism of 
our day is at first marked by an air of sad and 
thorough disillusionment. It counts for not a few 
in numbers and much more in influence. It holds 
the editorial chairs of many of our leading news- 
papers, it conducts our solid periodicals, writes 
our fiction and our poetry, pushes forward our 
scientific enterprises, teaches in our schools and 
colleges, engineers our great public works, organ- 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. 109 

izes our workingmen's societies, and in fact has 
a large share in the creating of the future of his- 
tory. 

Much of this modern Hellenism is indifferent 
to spiritual things, and reckons them undeserving 
of attention. Much of it is saddened by an un- 
welcome agnosticism which has forced itself upon 
it, and it clings to the remains of its earlier faith 
only with the dumb and foolish despair of one who 
cannot bear to let the casket containing the body 
of a loved one be carried forth to burial. They 
love the faith of their childhood ; but it is dead, 
and they know no basis for the hope of a resurrec- 
tion. Some have grown bitter and cynical toward 
what seem to be the illusions and superstitions of 
youth and ignorance ; and many are drowning the 
voice that calls, vainly as they think, for objects 
of spiritual hope and faith, by plunging into the 
thickest of the struggle for wealth or power or 
position. 

But there is a class of modern Hellenists cor- 
responding in every essential particular to that of 
our early Greek proselytes. They surrender no- 
thing of their Hellenistic independence of mind. 
The style of their thinking is the same as that of 
other Hellenists ; but its direction is determined 
by a moral earnestness and hopefulness which 
gives the distinguishing mark to their characters, 
making of them proselytes like those that would 
see Jesus. They cannot be anything else than 



110 THE IMPEBIAL CHRIST. 

skeptical as to the value of much of the moral 
and religious theorizing in vogue. They confess 
candidly that their moral earnestness and hopeful- 
ness can be warranted by no course of reasoning 
which they can devise or have seen, and they are 
unhappy enough because of it. But on one hand 
they are too good Greeks to pretend that an argu- 
ment is good when it is not, merely because they 
wish it were ; and on the other hand they have too 
much of the spirit of the proselyte to set aside the 
claims and the implicit prophecies of a high moral 
standard, because they cannot at the present vin- 
dicate them at the bar of criticism. When the 
pessimist asserts the worthlessness of human life, 
the emptiness of hopes, and the futility of human 
schemes, and denies that in all the universe there 
is or is to be a Christ, a Saviour from desolation, 
these modern Greek proselytes are not insensible 
to the force of the assertion, and do not flatter 
themselves that it can be successfully met by a 
few ad captandum summer-school speeches ad- 
dressed to the love of comfortable sensations. 
They take no particular pleasure in seeing intel- 
lectual rectitude slaughtered to make a vacation 
holiday, and so they seem to many to love their 
doubts. But the fact is that they cherish a long- 
ing and desperate hope that, under all the shifting 
sands of uncertainty and error and word-faith, will 
be found some real and abiding truth of eternal 
and cheering import ; and their moral instincts 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. Ill 

draw them in the direction in which this will 
probably be found, if at all. 

What Judaism, with its substratum of moral 
earnestness and hopefulness, of self-sacrifice and 
corporate enthusiasm, was to the Greeks endowed 
with soul-hunger, so the moral and the social side 
of Christianity is to the modern Greek proselyte. 
Philosophy has given him no fair promise of a 
Christ, of a reality to correspond with and to work 
out and perfect in him a triumphant manhood, 
percipient of and sympathetic with an Eternal 
Godhead. The Church, if she has had a Christ to 
preach, has too often obscured him by her systems 
and formularies concerning him, so that the Greek 
mind could not discern him, for the Church does 
not speak modern Greek. She often flouts it as a 
profane tongue, requires shibboleths the Greek 
cannot pronounce before she will begin to teach 
him, and then forbids his testing the Christliness 
of her Christ by the very spiritual faculty whose 
possession has made and kept him a proselyte. 
And so he turns pathetically away, and the Christ 
is hid from him. 

And still in spite of all obscuration and obscur- 
antism, the claim of Jesus of Nazareth to be the 
world's Christ forces its way through everything, 

and finds the mind and enlists the attention of 
« 

every intelligent person in these days. The prose- 
lyte who had come into Judaism to seek the 
Christ, and then discovered that neither the scho- 



112 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

lastic nor the popular conception of the Christ 
could much appeal to him, — that both had failed 
to define by essentials, to grasp the vital element 
of Christhood, — had still the immense advantage 
that he had been drawn at least geographically 
near to Jesus. It is true that common rumor in 
the mouths of both friends and enemies misrepre- 
sented Jesus. Believers in him ascribed to him 
the artificial character they supposed the Christ 
must have, and unbelievers simply denied that 
character. Such a 'priori tests of Christhood the 
proselyte would be poorly provided with. He had 
come into Judaism to find the Christ, not to adopt 
the rabbinical notions about what the Christ must 
be. What the Christ might be he did not pretend 
to know ; he had a vague but invincible persuasion 
that if once he saw the Christ he would recognize 
him as the Christ, and that then, though probably 
not sooner, he would know what he was. Like 
the man blind from birth, whose eyes have been 
couched, and who now awaits the removal of the 
bandage, he feels sure that he will know the light 
when it appears, but he makes no pretense of an 
adequate theory by which he shall judge whether 
or not it, is the light ; he must see it first. So the 
Greeks, both then and now, must see, and not 
construct, the Christ. 

The Christ of ordinary conception, both popular 
and learned, has been too often constructed, not 
seen. Men went to their teachers or their text- 



JESUS AND MODEEN HELLENISM. 113 

books, and these had gone to traditions or meta- 
physics, and these to mere ingenuity, to determine 
what sort of person a Christ must be ; and then, 
if they chose to call Jesus the Christ, they did it 
by making out that he was that sort of person. 
They proposed first to know the Christ by methods 
of their own devising, and then prove that Jesus 
was the Christ whom they had invented, instead 
of seeing Jesus as the Christ, and then learning 
what the Christ was, by what they saw of him. 
These two ways of approaching Jesus are very 
radically different. In the one case the man trusts 
his scholarship or his reason or his creed or his 
ecclesiastical superior to give him an abstract con- 
ception of the Christ, and then he comes to Jesus 
determined either to see that Christ in him, or not 
see anything at all. In the other case the man 
believes, either explicitly or without defining the 
fact to himself, in the Holy Spirit, and trusts that 
Spirit to reveal the things of Christ to him, when- 
ever and wheresoever he comes into the presence 
of their concrete embodiment. Then he seeks to 
see Jesus, not to know whether he be a Christ of 
his preconceptions, but to see whether he be a 
Christ at all, assured that, if Jesus be a Christ, 
then he will know what a Christ is. And this is 
the true spirit of the Greek proselyte. This is 
why he could not take the verdict of the temple 
schools or of the voice of popular rumor, but 
sought to see Jesus. That is why in our day he 



114 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

neglects the authorized treatises proving that Je- 
sus must have been so-and-so,' else he could not 
have been the Christ, and gives no heed at all to 
the loud voice of a good deal of our popular 
preaching, which merely echoes, a little belated, 
the words of these treatises, but, turning from all 
these, industriously seeks to see what sort of per- 
son Jesus of Nazareth actually was. 

So we have two kinds of literature concerning 
Jesus : one endeavoring to prove that he was some- 
thing, and the other seeking to discover and say 
just what he was. The latter, which is rapidly 
increasing and is destined to supplant the other, is 
the work of men of the type of the Greek prose- 
lyte ; and its original type was suggested by the 
Gospel of Luke, a proselyte. In all the public 
libraries I have observed that the well-thumbed 
copies of the lives of Jesus are those written, in 
however unsatisfactory a manner, from the Greek 
standpoint ; and I am sure that they were thumbed, 
not by truth-haters, but by truth-seekers. One 
may suppose that, when the Jewish doctors of di- 
vinity saw these Greeks elbowing their way through 
the crowds, and seeking a personal interview with 
Jesus, they took it as a kind of personal affront to 
themselves, as some of their successors regard ef- 
forts at personal investigation on the part of unor- 
dained persons to-day. " We can give you a much 
safer notion of this Jesus," they would say, " than 
any you may be able to form for yourselves. At 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. 115 

least, if you will insist upon personal interviews, 
come and let us imbue you first with certain pre- 
possessions, which may guard you from perilous 
errors." And so to-day when the Greek would 
study Jesus for himself, he is beset by such learned 
dogmatists clamoring for the adoption of their pre- 
conceptions, and warning him that it is not safe 
to approach Jesus without first learning to speak 
in the sacred dialect of their school. 

My sympathies are with both sides, for there is 
a good deal to be said on both. It will not do to 
ignore aspects or preconceptions, as if they did 
not express a vast deal of truth. It is not diffi- 
cult to make a strong and honest plea for the most 
imperfect of the Jewish notions about the Messiah. 
On the other hand it is impossible not to sympa- 
thize with the Hellenists who would see Jesus, and 
with every morally earnest person who, throwing 
away preconceived notions, passing by the systems 
and doctrines, goes directly and seeks to know 
Jesus. For our gospel is that Jesus is the Christ ; 
not that some Christ of our inventing is Jesus, but 
that Jesus is the Christ. If one wants a Christ 
let him disciple with Jesus, say we, and he will 
surely find one. He may not form any very sym- 
metrical or complete idea of the Christ, — there may 
be reasons in himself why he will not, — but the 
idea he does form will have substance in it, and 
will be his own. It will probably be as it is in 
our knowledge of one another. I have German, 



116 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

English, and Japanese friends. The Germans form 
German notions of me, I have no doubt ; the 
English, English notions, and the Japanese, some 
sort of, to me inconceivable, Japanese notions. 
Likewise the German, the Englishman, and the 
Japanese, who knows Jesus, will each form his 
own conception of the Christ. Educated and spirit- 
ually minded Hindoos complained that English 
and American missionaries had been preaching in 
India not so much Christ Jesus as Christ Anglo- 
Saxon, and that this lacked adaptability to Hindoo 
wants. One of them proposed to go back of the 
Anglo-Saxon Christ to Jesus of Nazareth, and, 
starting therefrom, to represent to his countrymen 
the Oriental Christ. Whatever the performance 
may have been, the aim was legitimate. In Jesus 
each man and each nation will find that type of 
Christ which is best adapted to him and to it. 
As the Jews had a Jewish conception of Christ, 
so the Greeks who approached Jesus would get a 
Greek conception. We are sometimes narrow 
and intolerant about this, and are jealous of allow- 
ing others to frame notions differing from ours 
as their mental peculiarities differ. The remedy 
for narrowness is to make a virtue of encouraging 
every person to see Jesus for himself. 

I cannot but be speaking to some who appreci- 
ate the need of a Christ, who feel the presence 
and persistence of sad mysteries, — the mystery of 
sorrow, of sin, and moral impotence. The shadows 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. 117 

of life fall very dark across many pathways. The 
world's consolations are husks, and our preaching 
is little or no better. They would find a Christ. 
Though they seem to be seeking rather languidly, 
it is because they have been so discouraged and 
have well-nigh lost heart. Yet there is present to 
them a half-latent desire for the eternal salvation, 
whatever that may be. And this is a safeguard 
in days of temptation, and the source of strange 
yearnings, which come out in spasmodic acts of 
self-denial or devotion. They are seekers after a 
Christ. 

Brother seeker, I ask you not to accept my 
doctrine concerning the Christ. I ask you not to 
think my thought about him. I ask you not to 
feel my feeling toward him, or to serve him in the 
same way I do, or to say " Amen " to my prayers 
and praises. Your mind and mine may be so dif- 
ferent that the Christ I seem to see might not ap- 
pear to you a Christ to be loved or served. But 
see Jesus. Turn away from my teaching and the 
teaching of every philosophy and creed, and dis- 
ciple with Jesus. Whatever the form of my own 
thought concerning Jesus, I am so fully persuaded 
that he is the Christ that I am willing to point 
all sincere souls to him in full assurance that, the 
more free from all preconceived opinions about 
him they may be, the more real and attractive will 
be the Christ they wdll find in him. Men do not 
know what they want of a Christ ; and the more 



118 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

intelligent they are, the less they can define their 
wants. You have a vague sense of unrest, a crav- 
ing for that which will satisfy an undefined hunger, 
a universal discontent with self and the world, 
a lonesomeness, a homesickness for the Eternal. 
Come and see Jesus. You will see in him that 
which will transform your vague sense at once 
into a special sense ; and while showing you exactly 
the thing that will satisfy your need, it will at the 
same time offer it to you. 

That is our gospel — Jesus. I am preaching 
no theology at all to-day, although I have a the- 
ology, and should be unfit to stand in a Christian 
pulpit if I did not have one. I am preaching no 
philosophy to-day ; although I believe in philoso- 
phy, and have the outlines of one, for working 
purposes at least. I should go insane if I were 
doomed to incoherence of thought. I am preach- 
ing no church to-day ; I believe in the Holy 
Catholic Church. I am preaching no particular 
Christ ; I have some grasp of a divine Christ-idea, 
but I am not preaching that, I am preaching 
Jesus. Upon the ignorant and weak, whose con- 
ceptions I must furnish, whose thoughts I must 
think for them, whose religious dictator, whose 
pope I must be, — upon them I may bring to bear 
the impress of my own type of character, and 
cause them to accept my interpretation of Jesus, 
my Christ. But to my equals or superiors in 
intelligence and in force and individuality of mind 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. 119 

and character I can only preach Jesus. The mis- 
sionary realizes this. To some nations he carries 
his whole theology, creeds, metaplrysics, and all ; to 
others he finds he can carry less ; to the strongest 
these things are nothing, and his only really effec- 
tive message is Jesus. So to-day I speak to the 
strong and the thoughtful and the informed, and I 
have only one thing to say, and that is, See Jesus. 
See him. Bring your organized powers of per- 
ception, your scientific instruments and methods 
to bear. See him. Assume your dictum that no 
concrete knowledge comes except through obser- 
vation and experience, that intuition is but most 
highly organized sensation, and that reason gives 
but empty forms. See him. Suppress the imagi- 
nation, spurn idealism. He will start them up 
again, after he has fully vindicated himself with- 
out them. See him. Test and measure him in 
terms of foot-pounds, or ohms, or volts, or what- 
ever is your newest-fangled unit of measure. See 
him. Insist upon coordinating him with the rest 
of the known and knowable universe, and mutu- 
ally expressing him and it in terms of each other. 
Oh, I have seen an evil under the sun, two of 
them, twin evils, and I never lose the chance to 
prophecy against them. I have seen persons of 
culture accept on one hand the teaching of the 
spirit of the age, that whatever is fact must be 
able to be discerned in its relations to the world 
of fact ; and on the other hand thoughtlessly give 



120 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

way to the current notion that the alleged Christ- 
hood of Jesus is proved more than in any other 
way by the impossibility of so placing him in re- 
lation to history. And so they turn away from 
him, and settle down into — I will not say a con- 
tented, but an habitual and dogged agnosticism 
concerning the one thing which, if apprehended, 
can pour their cup of life full to overbrimming, 
and complete their thought of an intelligible uni- 
verse. That is one of these evils. And then I 
have seen other persons of culture make terms 
with their religious cravings against their mental 
integrity, and live double lives as if with science 
domesticated in one brain lobe, and piety in the 
other. That is an evil threatening either mental 
or moral wreck, or both. Now both these evils — 
that chill agnosticism on one hand, and this me- 
chanical mixture of science and pietism on the 
other — come from a failure to penetrate into the 
presence of Jesus and actually see him. I plead 
for an earnest, sincere, industrious study of Jesus 
as an historical personage. He who seeks to see 
him will find him respond like no other character 
in history to the tests by which facts are discerned ; 
and the more unrelentingly he is pursued as a fact, 
the more will his Christhood stand out. Our gos- 
pel is that Jesus is a Christ, — you will ask to go 
no further, — you will see the Christ. 

I trust I may not be accused of the common sin 
of overdriving my text. As intimated before, I 



JESUS AND MODEBN HELLENISM. 121 

believe that while this incident was not invented, 
as Strauss would say it was, yet it was remembered 
and related as a typical case illustrating the begin- 
nings of that contact of the Greek mind with Je- 
sus, whose philosophical, religious, and historical 
consequences have been so great. As such it is 
fair to press it for all it is worth. And it suggests 
a word to the disciples of Jesus. We, his disci- 
ples, stand between Jesus and an inquiring world. 
Its request to see him is addressed to us, and most 
of it will never see any other Jesus than it can see 
through us. At any rate we must introduce it to 
him. The world will not, if it can, and but the few 
can, break through the hedge of doctrinalism which 
has come to surround him, stereotyping the Scrip- 
tures concerning him as though in a dead tongue. 
We are the living epistles to be known and read 
of all men, and each of us is responsible for trans- 
lating the life of Jesus into his own individual 
manhood, and living it before the world. It is 
not to be overlooked that these Greeks approached 
that one of the disciples who had a point of con- 
tact with them. From Philip's Greek name, which 
would not have been given without some reason, it 
would be right for the proselytes to infer that they 
might find response in him, that perhaps he spoke 
Greek. Likewise we, so far as can be done with- 
out transgressing the laws of symmetry, should 
cultivate and emphasize our individualities, espe- 
cially those which will give us points of contact with 



122 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

an inquiring world. Heterogeneity is the law of 
life. We do not want uniformity of religious 
type. If we are Greeks, let us be Greek Chris- 
tians, and not try to conform mechanically to the 
Jewish pattern. If we are large-minded in other 
things, let us not sacrifice the advantage, and by 
way of conformity adopt some small or ignorant 
conception of the Christ. If we are practical, let 
us put Jesus at the centre of business. If we are 
emotional in daily life, loving our families and 
friends effusively, then let no cold propriety re- 
strain us in our expressions of love to Jesus. Do 
not let accidental church connections determine 
wholly the fashion of our devotion. And in all 
our contact with the hesitating world about us, let 
us remember that, however contemptuous it may 
be of us and our notions or our church, it is uni- 
formly respectful in reference to Jesus. That is a 
remarkable fact, profoundly significant of things 
which are about to be. What of coarse and vul- 
gar skepticism there is, is a relic of the days of 
Paine, and is dying out in the atmosphere of the 
nineteenth century. The doubt of to-day is earn- 
est and critical, but it is respectful. It says, " Sir, 
we would see Jesus." It has learned to believe in 
and respect the manhood of faith in Jesus and 
loyalty to him ; and self-respectful and conscious 
of rectitude itself, it asks of us that we treat it 
with respect, and show it the basis of our belief, 
that if possible it may come into a like precious 
faith, 



JESUS AND MODERN HELLENISM. 123 

Finally, the modern spirit of inquiry concerning 
Jesus is not given to doting upon a false individu- 
alism. It has learned that true individualism is 
not inconsistent with the fellowship of research. 
It already feels the promptings of the spirit of 
wholeness, or holiness, and it pursues truth in 
company with those who are congenial with it. 
To borrow a metaphor from the athletic field, it 
does fine team-work in its efforts to win the goal 
of truth. This is not the age of the closet phi- 
losopher, spinning metaphysics out of himself like 
the solitary spider. The rounding up of facts for 
inductive purposes compels cooperation. Where 
two or three are met together in Jesus' name, his 
Christhood will appear. " We," men are saying, 
" we would see Jesus." The sense of brotherhood 
of soul, the universal Spirit, has melted thought 
together, that thus the answer to the question con- 
cerning Jesus may be given. A spirit is a corpo- 
rate force. We live in the dispensation of the 
spirit, and the ive who would see Jesus is the uni- 
versal we, the mind of humanity, of which each 
smaller group of truth-seekers was a part and a 
prophecy. I have begun to look after my health, 
that I may, if possible, win the inestimable privi- 
lege of living through the next twenty years. Oh, 
what years they will be ! The central figure of 
the world's life in the coming years will be Jesus. 
I do not ask you, my friend, to choose Jesus as 
the most important fact in your life for the next 



124 THE IMPERIAL CHBIST. 

twenty years. That is not for you to choose, any 
more than it is for you to choose whether the sun 
shall be the centre of the solar system for those 
two decades. There he is at the very right hand 
of Eternal Majesty. Behold him ! The next few 
years are to witness such a recognition of the 
supreme importance of the personality of Jesus, 
such an exaltation and enthronement of him, as 
will visibly change the face of the earth. Be in 
it, young men and women. Get what else you 
can, — get a living, get wealth, get position, get 
office, but above all things get at the fact concern- 
ing the personality of Jesus. And in so doing 
you will gain an enthusiasm that will make life 
for you : there is no life worth living without en- 
thusiasm. Enthusiasm, — God-intoxication is the 
translation of it, — enthusiasm is life ; and the 
knowledge of Jesus alone in these days will give 
a permanent enthusiasm, that will not fall into 
fanaticism on one hand, or die out into disen- 
chantment on the other. Let us enter into life : 
and this is life eternal, to know God and Jesus 
Christ, to be enthused, God-intoxicated, by Jesus. 



VIII. 

THE TRANSFIGURED AND TRANSFIGURING CROSS. 

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. — Gal. vi. 14. 

" The cross of Jesus has in a strange way held 
man spellbound, and forced him to listen to its 
story like a child who cannot choose but hear." 
It is a wondrous fascination this symbol has gained. 
The original cross was in itself the last thing 
fitted to touch the imagination, being only a post 
some seven or eight feet high with a peg upon 
which the body rested astride, having the arms 
nailed across the top, which formed a T. There 
were other shapes, but this was the common one, 
and all were equally unpoetic.l It was the instru- 
ment for the torture of slaves and baser criminals, 
and was sought for Jesus by his haters because 
it was thought that a death so disgraceful would 
forever destroy any influence he might have won 
with the people. Their plan was "refutation by 
odium." The law of Moses had provided for the 
hanging of the bodies of certain detested crimi- 
nals, and had meant it to be equivalent to a curse ; 
hence the saying, " Cursed is every one that hang- 



126 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

eth upon a tree." Thus it was determined that 
all the messianic claims of Jesus should be forever 
silenced by heaping contumely upon him in the 
manner of his death. Wonderful is the irony 
with which the wider law of history confutes the 
reasonings and overthrows the schemes of those 
who think they understand how to control events. 
For Jesus did not transgress, but rather fulfilled 
the prophecies and necessities of the case, when 
he transfigured the disgrace into honor and, by 
hanging upon it, metamorphosed the cross into 
the throne and symbol of divinely human empire. 

It is a mistake to say that such a transforma- 
tion could never have been foreseen or foretold. 
Socrates had more than a glimpse of its possi- 
bility; and while the Hebrew prophets did not 
predict the thing itself, they did in their sublimer 
flights gain glimpses of the principle of it. They 
saw that the greatest benefactors of the race had 
been those whom the race cast out as unfit for a 
place in society ; that he who fulfilled the highest 
law of humanity had to do it by consenting to 
become an outlaw, to be numbered among the 
transgressors, to be despised and rejected, to have 
men turn their faces from him. These prophecies 
went unheard and unheeded, and only later ages 
went back and saw how, under the unexampled 
suffering of the Captivity, some of the psalmists 
had vaguely guessed the great law which was 
fulfilled when the cross became the centre of the 



THE TRANSFIGURED CROSS. 127 

moral universe and the sign of a compassionate 
God. The change in the significance of the cross 
was revolutionary, not because it contradicted the 
law of the nature of things, but because it brought 
to light a law which had been forgotten. Still, 
although we can now say that the cross is the 
formula which expresses the fundamental law of 
this universe of law, it is of exceeding value not 
only to say this, but to trace the way in which the 
cross of Jesus became the central object of interest 
to the world. It now lends its interpretation to 
the universe. 

But how did it come to be so important a fact ? 
It is not because of the dogmatic interpretation 
which has been put upon it. The cross of Jesus 
survived its disgrace, won its importance, became 
a cause of glorying, during the lifetime of the 
generation that saw it set up on Golgotha. The 
dogmas came long afterward. They were a result, 
and not a cause. Augustine and Anselm found 
the cross supreme, and invented dogmas more or 
less true to correspond. It may be, as some sus- 
pect, that the dogmas hindered rather than helped 
the extension of the sovereignty of the cross. As 
little was it the mere picture of physical suffering 
that gave the cross its power. The world was 
used to scenes of worse torture, and had looked 
unmoved upon many deaths ostensibly more tragic 
and heroic. Some have claimed that the elevation 
of the cross to its supremacy is the achievement 



128 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

of the genius of the apostle Paul. It is said that 
a study of the life and thought of Paul reveals 
an unconscious combination of myth-making and 
dogma-making which yields all the results. Now 
while a knowledge of Paul is essential to a know- 
ledge of Christianity, a better knowledge of him 
shows that the cross was making conquest even 
of the Gentile world before Paul began his work. 
He saw its significance more clearly than others, 
and his interpretation may have been to some 
extent written back into the history. But the 
evidence is abundant that Paul did not originate 
the glory of the cross. 

Who, then, did originate it? Or was it an 
accident ? Accidents do not happen on so great a 
scale as that. It was no accident, but the product 
of law; and it was, in accordance with law, a 
conscious creation of Jesus himself. With delib- 
erate foresight and forethought Jesus took that 
symbol of torture and shame, and set it up as the 
standard of his divine royalty. It is clear that 
Jesus did not openly announce his personal mes- 
siahship, until he saw that there was no other 
method of bringing in the Christian era but for 
a victim to be offered. 

The "egotism" of Jesus has puzzled many. 
But he undertook to found the kingdom of God 
anonymously, and would have been willing to 
drop into personal oblivion. Though he knew 
he was the Messiah, the man through whom the 



THE TRANSFIGURED CROSS. 129 

kingdom of God was to come, that knowledge 
did not to his unselfish mind involve any personal 
fame, and his early ministry was aimed at the 
founding of a kingdom with which his name was 
not to be associated. He sought not glory of men. 
But a crisis came, when it was evident that who- 
ever would found that kingdom must be ready, not 
to be glorified, but to be despised and disgraced 
and humiliated more than any man had ever been ; 
he must be willing that his name should be not 
merely unknown, but that it should be known as a 
term of reproach. Then he refrained no longer, 
but declared that the kingdom of God was to be 
his personal kingdom, and he set out for Jeru- 
salem to claim the crown of desertion, rejection, 
and contempt. 

He was well acquainted in Jerusalem. He had 
visited it at least yearly since his boyhood. For 
him to anticipate that the chief priests would be 
the ones to compass his death, and that they 
would do it by the Roman method, required no 
more acumen than he displayed again and again 
when he had to meet and unmask their designs. 
It is reported that after he came to Jerusalem, 
he remarked, probably as he pointed from a dis- 
tance to an execution in sight on the hill where 
he expected to suffer, and observed the crowds 
attracted toward it, " I, if I be lifted up, will 
draw all men unto me." He must have early 
endeavored to lead his disciples to see that the 



130 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

natural and necessary consummation of Lis mes- 
sianic enterprise was through disgrace and death. 
For the story of the transfiguration does not read 
like a myth, and it has every element of prob- 
ability in its favor, if we assume that it followed 
some peculiarly intimate conversation concerning 
the expected death and its relation to the fulfill- 
ment of the essence of Jewish prophecy. And 
if the transfiguration were to be explained away, 
it would have to be on the basis of some parable 
or other, and this would equally show that Jesus 
was contemplating the fulfillment of his messiah- 
ship through his death. It may therefore be 
regarded as a settled fact that, when Jesus started 
on that last journey, his passion journey, he knew 
that his messianic claims were to be sealed with 
his death in the most disgraceful form. 

His estimate of the meaning and dignity of 
his Christhood was not thereby lowered at all. 
He believed himself no less great ; greater in 
truth ; for we have reason to think that there 
came to him at that time the idea, an inference 
from his own conscious greatness and his con- 
fidence in his Father, that he could not remain 
under the power of death. Claiming to be the 
Christ whom the Jews expected, and as such 
asserting his right to universal dominion, he did 
not abate one jot of these claims when he resolved 
to die. He determined to attract all eyes to the 
scene of his death, to make it the central point 



THE TRANSFIGURED CROSS. 131 

of interest in the world's history. And this thing 
which Jesus deliberately determined to do has 
come to pass. 

If a man says he will do a thing, and it is done, 
the natural presumption is that he was the doer 
of it. If Jesus said from the first that his death 
would be substantially what it has been to the 
world, then whatever other inferences may be 
made, it is not an unfair inference that the rea- 
son why his death has been so important is to 
be found in the secret of his own personality and 
its relation to the world. That is to say, when 
Jesus of Nazareth made his will in Csesarea 
Philippi, and signed and recorded it by that 
solemn ceremony in the upper chamber in Jeru- 
salem some months after, — his will that his death 
should attract universal attention and become the 
turning-point of human history, — when he so 
willed, and the event has come out as he willed it, 
the inference is that Jesus knew enough what he 
was about, and had enough resource of power or 
position, or both, to accomplish it. Consequently, 
the main reason why the event came to pass was 
because he willed it to come to pass. Hence, if 
his death proves to be the beginning of a new 
world, his will is the creator of that world. You 
may call him God, or you may call him man, I 
care not. If his choice to transfigure the cross, 
and to use it to transfigure human life and human 
nature and human aspiration and human achieve- 



132 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

ment, and the material universe thereby, actually 
did transfigure these things, or so begin the work 
that its completion is certain, then all I ask for 
him, all I need ask, is the acknowledgment of 
that fact and the practical consequences that flow 
from it. 

But still there would, properly enough, remain a 
doubt whether the remarkable parallelism between 
the anticipations of Jesus concerning his death 
and the actual consequences of that death are not 
a mere coincidence. If these anticipations were 
only incidents of his experience, and did not be- 
long to the characteristics of the man himself, this 
would be a staggering doubt. But his whole ca- 
reer to the minutest details hitherto has been in 
full harmony with the character of that anticipa- 
tion. He not only foresaw death as one who knew 
himself to be the greatest man who had ever lived, 
and knew that the fate of men hinged upon him 
as it hinged on no one else, but he did everything 
consistently with that assumption concerning him- 
self. Not to go back through his life to note this, 
let us observe him in the article of death, as he is 
to be seen from this point of view. I shall not 
try to paint scenes of agony, or to harrow your 
feelings with realistic images of the horrors of 
crucifixions. I could not do that if I would. It 
lies beyond my power. Nor would it serve our 
purpose. But let us inquire whether this Jesus, 
who, as we have said, deliberately chose the cross 



THE TEAXSFIGUBED CROSS. 133 

as a throne from which to rule the world, when 
the time comes for him to ascend that throne, 
ascends it with the same kingly gait with which 
he approached it. Kingly yet human gait : for it 
is not asked of us that we seek to find in Jesus a 
non-human and hence an unintelligible Master. 

"We must touch but lightly upon the seyeral 
scenes recorded with a yiew to only determining 
how they measure with his self -consciousness. The 
first of these is as he leaves the city. The men 
about him are brutal enough, but women bestow 
upon him and, womanlike, upon his mother words 
of pity. Sublimely forgetful of his own suffering, 
present and prospective, he turns to them, and, 
with his own heart overflowing with pity for them, 
bids them weep not for him but for themselves. 
Even then, fainting from the wounds of the scourg- 
ing and the weight of the cross, he was unmindful 
of his own suffering and mindful only of that of 
others, and that not merely in an unselfish way, 
but with a clear breadth of messianic vision, which 
showed that he had not in his agony forgotten his 
motives and expectations. This was characteristic 
of the man who willed that his death should save 
the whole world. 

The next event of significance is the refusal to 
take the stupefying drink, which was mercifully 
provided for those who suffered this death, and 
which partially allayed the first and acuter pains. 
His consciousness of the universal import of his 



134 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

death made him feel that there would be an im- 
propriety in his meeting it under the influence of 
a drug, and the impropriety is obvious to us all ; 
his action here was consistent. His very silence 
during all the excruciating agony of the fastening 
to the cross is eloquent of his character. 

Then there are recorded seven sayings on the 
cross. The critics dispute the authenticity of 
some of these, and it would be difficult to meet 
them with positive proof. But their case is weak ; 
for if myth had been inventing, it probably would 
have invented something more pretentious than 
these. This the critics recognize, when they for 
the most part concede that the spirit of Jesus has 
spoken even in the things which they maintain to 
have been inventions. But if the spirit of Jesus, 
why not Jesus himself ? No one else was so likely 
to speak in his spirit. If the spirit of Jesus led 
the myth-makers to create sayings more like him 
than he was himself, then the question would still 
remain what sort of man it was whose spirit could 
do such marvels. Even if the sayings were in- 
vented, therefore they are still a record of the 
impressions which his death produced upon the 
beholders, and they may therefore be treated as 
though they were uttered. 

The first is so thoroughly characteristic of him 
that, if there had been no record of it, we might 
have been sure that it was uttered, silently at 
least, — " Father, forgive them, for they know not 



THE TRANSFIGURED CROSS. 135 

what they do." The next was addressed to one of 
the victims crucified by his side, and is entirely 
consistent both with the loving, self -forgetting 
spirit of Jesus, and with his lofty self-conscious- 
ness, whatever interpretation we may place upon 
that self-consciousness. Jesus must have so borne 
himself that this poor dying culprit felt that 
somehow he could depend upon him. • Even the 
exact words he used could be accounted for, 
though it may be easier to suppose that here the 
reporters employed their own modes of conception 
and expression. But that Jesus, with the supreme 
conviction that his death was an atonement for sin, 
and that the future, both of this life and the next 
belonged to him, should have made use of the 
knowledge to shed a ray of hope across the de- 
parting life of his fellow-sufferer, is in the highest 
degree characteristic. So characteristic, indeed, 
is the whole scene that, when once it is suggested 
to us, we can hardly imagine anything but that it 
must have happened. Jesus could not have spent 
several conscious hours between two dying thieves 
without trying to do something for them ; and he 
who said to the paralytic, " Thy sins are forgiven," 
would not be slow to administer equally categori- 
cal relief to a poor creature who leaned upon him 
for hope in his last extremity. 

Again characteristic is his tender solicitude for 
the care of his mother. With this his concern 
with earthly, things ceases; the clouds have cov- 



136 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

ered Lis eyes ; the roaring of the deep waters has 
come up into his ears ; the world is closed to hiui. 
But Jesus was no grim Stoic, too proud for utter- 
ance when utterance is the natural expression of 
his situation. He does not get out of sight and 
touch of humanity ; and so when the last agony 
begins, whose accompaniment is intense thirst, he 
cries out, " I thirst." It is significant, because 
it shows that his sublime self -consciousness has not 
dehumanized him ; it is as natural to him as my 
self-consciousness is to me. 

Then comes the most explicable and most inex- 
plicable cry of all, — " My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me ? " Some would make it that 
this is a protest against the length of time he was 
in dying. There is a second and better interpre- 
tation. The words are the first line of the 22d 
psalm. This psalm begins with a wail of de- 
spair, and ends with a paean of victory. Al- 
though doubtless giving the experience of some 
actual sufferer and his triumph over it through 
faith in Jehovah, it is in truth one of the great 
messianic psalms. When the horror of darkness 
came over Jesus, nothing was more fitting than 
that he should express what he felt by quoting the 
words of this psalm. He only needed to utter the 
first words ; all the rest was involved ; as, when 
a believing soul whispers, " Jesus, Lover of my 
Soul," the whole hymn is implied. But along 
with, or rather immediately following, the experi- 



THE TBANSFIGUBED CROSS. 137 

ence represented in the first part of the psalm 
conies the reviving consolation and exaltation of 
the last part. The utterance of the words, 4i My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " in 
full sincerity, brought with it the answer of God 
by bringing with it, through the laws of a trained 
and educated memory (one of God's usual ways 
of helping his children), the assurance of deliver- 
ance and conquest. And so the taste of death 
absorbed all the bitterness of it, and the drinking 
of it was painless and peaceful, so that with his 
departing breath he could softly breathe the prayer 
of perfect faith, — " Father, into thy hands I com- 
mit my spirit." Then, with his great work still 
before his mind and the sense that it was com- 
pleted, the last words were spoken, — " It is fin- 
ished." 

If the Gentile centurion bore witness that he 
died like a son of God, he meant no metaphysical 
dogma ; for he could not have comprehended such 
a thing. If I say he died like the Son of God, I 
do not necessarily mean any metaphysical dogma ; 
though I believe such dogma cannot go beyond 
the truth, however it may fall short of it. I may 
only mean that this man, who believed and pro- 
claimed himself to be the Jewish Christ, the head 
man of our race, the man who should rescue us 
from an evil estate and bring us into a new estate 
of restored divine sonship : — this man who, when 
he realized the fact that he could do what he had 



138 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

determined to do only through his assumption of 
authority and exercise of power which was not less 
than divine in its range, assumed this authority 
and began to exercise this power ; this man who, 
when he saw that he must die to succeed, willed to 
die and to succeed, and to make the cross his 
throne of universal sovereignty ; this man who so 
believed in himself and his mission and destiny 
that he appropriated to himself the ancient pro- 
phecies, which described him as sitting on the 
right hand of God and coming in the clouds of 
heaven ; — this man died without in any respect 
compromising the character he had chosen to as- 
sume for himself. If, living, he had confessed 
that the title Son of God was not too honorable 
for him, dying, he had not withdrawn or modified 
the confession. It was therefore by no accident 
or coincidence that his death marks the central 
point of the world's history ; it is because he 
willed that it should, and because, whatever name 
you give to him, he was such a person that what 
he willed he executed, even to the creation of a 
new universe. 



IX. 

THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 

AN EASTER SERMON. 

That life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith 
which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up 
for me. — Gal. ii. 20. 

This morning our senses have been ravished 
and our souls enraptured. The fragrance and 
beauty of these flowers are the creation of nature, 
or, speaking the language of piety, of God. The 
more than beauty and fragrance, the nobility and 
holy incense of that music are the creation of a 
partnership of God and man. For music, as we 
know it, is one of the fruits of a rejuvenation of 
this old world which began when a few despised 
men proclaimed the incredible story that a certain 
other man, who had died a disgraceful death, had 
arisen from the dead. The world was forgetting 
how to sing ; in truth, it never had known how to 
sing anything but the barest unharmonized ditties 
of thoughtlessness. But now its spirit was broken, 
its voice was cracked, it was decrepit, disenchanted, 
it was depraved and morally impotent, entering 



140 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

upon a premature and unlovely old age. It was 
made young, the spirit of childhood and youth 
reinfused in its shriveled old veins by the tri- 
umphant spread of a faith founded upon the al- 
leged resurrection of that one man. Now no longer 
a mere child, but a man with the healthy heart of 
a child, the world has learned how to create and 
to sing such music as antiquity could not dream 
of. And these two things, the rejuvenation of the 
world and the faith in the resurrection of that 
man, belong together as cause and effect. 

I see you before me to-day, your faces deej)ly 
marked with lines of care, even of anxiety, but it 
is a loving care and anxiety ; it is not despair ; I 
see no lines of malice. Stern purpose I see, but 
where the purpose is sternest, the marks also of 
submission are most noticeable. I see you with 
the countenances of children looking out through 
fringes of often prematurely whitened hair ; and I 
know, when I stop to consider, that but for the 
faith in the resurrection of that man, no eye could 
to-day have looked upon so blessed a sight as the 
love-suffused face of this audience. The two things 
belong together as cause and effect. At most times 
it would be enough to note this fact, and, assuming 
the cause, to seek to intensify the effect. Remem- 
bering, however, that a faith always assumed may 
imperceptibly become empty of its content, or shift 
from its foundation, there are times when it is be- 
coming to consider not merely the effects of the 
faith, but the faith itself. 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 141 

We have followed the history of Jesus of Naza- 
reth through the conditions of his origin and child- 
hood, through the struggle which revealed to him 
himself and his mission. We saw him try to ful- 
fill the work of the Jewish Messiah, whom he be- 
lieved himself to be. We saw how he grew to the 
growing dimensions of his task until, when it ap- 
peared to need a man of God-like proportions and 
God-like consciousness, he became a man of such 
proportions and consciousness in all that pertained 
to the requirements of his mission. He was con- 
vinced that by no accident, nor yet by any arbi- 
trarily executed decree, but in the fullness of time 
by the ripening of the race-life, there had come 
into his hands the destiny of a race so endowed, 
that the problem of its destiny was one not merely 
of time but of eternity. He was persuaded that 
all power in heaven and in earth was given to him. 
He might save this race if he chose. He might let 
it be damned. He might save it to faith uncon- 
querable, to hope unfettered, to love unmeasured. 
He might let it be doomed to universal and mutual 
mistrust and distrust, to despair blacker than night, 
and hatred blacker than hell. When he chose 
to save the world, he himself showed the first 
fruits of a love unmeasured, a hope unfettered, and 
a faith un conquerable. For he must die, as he 
plainly saw. Yet the salvation of the race was to 
be his mission, and he would not believe that it 
should be any less his mission, after he had died 



142 THE IMPEEIAL CHBIST. 

to accomplish it. This conviction, that the salva- 
tion of the race was to be his personal mission, 
took shape in a faith that he would survive death, 
and come again personally to complete his work. 

This confidence in himself, however, was a re- 
ligious confidence ; it was not founded upon a 
worship of self, for he had resisted the temptation 
to allow it to generate self-worship. It coexisted 
with a sense of absolute and worshiping depend- 
ence upon the will of God. Jesus knew that he 
was not an original but a derived person ; he was 
a son. How this sense of self-confidence could 
coexist without conflicting with the sense of de- 
pendence, we learn when we see the nature of his 
faith in God ; it is the faith of a son in a father. 
He believed as fully in God's love as he did in his 
power. And so he believed in himself, not in 
spite of, but because of the sense of dependence. 
" The Father loveth the son, and hath given all 
things into his hand." 

Jesus needed this faith in the love and power 
of an almighty. Father when he contemplated the 
necessity of dying for his race ; for Jesus had no 
other species of knowledge concerning that which 
lies beyond death than is common to man, and 
to all human sense death is the end of selfhood. 
Jesus' belief, therefore, that death would not end 
his selfhood, and that he should personally fulfill 
the work with which his selfhood had become 
identified, was directly dependent upon his faith 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 143 

in the Fatherhood of Omnipotence. Yet such a 
faith could not define the method of its realization, 
and hence Jesus could not profess to know the 
times or the seasons for the reestablishment of his 
personal relation to his race and his work for it. 
So long as he was alive, he administered his own 
work, choosing ways and means, even the way of 
death itself. What provisions he made for the 
future, he made upon the basis of such foresight 
as all men have. He made his will like other 
men, disposing of and entailing the influence of 
his short life and his voluntary death, so that 
these things and the memory of him should con- 
tinue their work in the world until he came. So 
sober minded, so soundly reasonable was the Son 
of man that if, when he went out into the un- 
known world, even his expectation of a personal 
return should be swallowed up in some more 
comprehensive and hitherto unthinkable scheme 
of divine love, he would not have to feel regret 
because of anything left undone of that which 
pertains to this life. He left the world with his 
affairs in order ; his work incomplete in the sense 
in which all men, who live nobly and die in the 
prime of life, leave their work incomplete, — only 
in a degree measured by the work itself and the 
man, and, so measured, infinitely incomplete. 
Jesus, then, in the unwavering conviction that 
he himself is to be forever personally at the head 
of a saved and glorified race, and with such pre- 



144 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

vision of the future as a supreme self-knowledge 
and a supreme faith in a loving and almighty 
Father may give> — Jesus of Nazareth thus dies 
on the cross of Calvary. This is history un- 
questioned. 

Seven weeks later, history begins again with an 
outburst of spiritual energy at Jerusalem at the 
feast of Pentecost ; and from that day to this with- 
out any break has gone on the spread of a move- 
ment which is placing Jesus upon the throne of 
human history and of human life. The sense in 
which Jesus is being placed upon the throne of 
human life is not, however, precisely the sense in 
which he predicted that he would ultimately reign. 
But if accounts can be trusted, he did predict this 
spiritual enthronement as a sort of interregnum, 
expecting that it was to be followed by something 
more directly personal. With that, however, we 
have not to do at present. Now the beginning 
of this reign of the spirit of Jesus is, like his 
death, undoubted history. Like his death it is 
unprecedented, but not for that reason unintelli- 
gible, because Jesus nowhere laid aside his hu- 
manity ; and this spiritual reign of his is in the 
strictest sense in harmony with the highest laws 
of human nature. So that, although nothing in 
human history has equaled it, everything in hu- 
man history except sin is akin to it, and for this 
reason it can extend itself, until it covers the 
whole territory of human life, except what sin 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 145 

has preempted ; and it will ultimately crowd out 
sin. 

So we see that an undoubted and unprecedented, 
though not an unintelligible, history seems to 
stop on the Friday evening of Passover week, and 
to resume at Pentecost. But of course history 
does not stop ; it is not in the nature of history 
to stop and stand still seven weeks. Moreover, 
when it resumes at Pentecost, it does not resume 
where it left off. Something or other has hap- 
pened in the interval, and something or other, it 
is fair to presume, as unprecedented as the other 
parts of the history to which it forms a connecting 
link. Let him who thinks he understands some- 
thing of the preceding and succeeding history 
guess what may or must have occurred during 
these seven weeks. Or if he is too cautious to 
launch a mere guess, let him at least not forget 
the probability of something unprecedented, while 
he is criticising the alleged account of what actu- 
ally did take place. 

The earliest written of these accounts we owe 
to the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians xv. Next 
come the brief but suggestive references in the 
Apocalypse of John. Then the Synoptic Gospels 
and Acts, and latest the Gospel of John. But 
although, in attempting to harmonize the details 
of the written accounts, their age and their rela- 
tive ages are to be considered, no theory of their 
reliability or unreliability destroys their testi- 



146 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

mony, and that of the general history of Christi- 
anity, to the fact that the disciples of Jesus alleged 
upon the day of Pentecost, and continued to 
allege throughout the early history of the church, 
that Jesus had arisen from the dead, and had 
been seen some eight or ten times by individuals, 
by groups or by crowds. This was the conquer- 
ing war-cry of the apostles. Upon this assertion 
they wagered success ; as when Paul at Athens 
ended a convincing and conciliatory speech after 
the method of Greek philosophy by proclaiming 
the resurrection, and retiring from the platform 
and from the city amid jeers. That challenge 
which Paul threw out on Mars' Hill has been 
redeemed, and his gospel of a risen Christ is to- 
day the touchstone of every world-philosophy. 

We must forego at this time any attempt to 
analyze the various accounts purporting to repre- 
sent this fact. Many efforts have been made to 
explain it away. Most of these have had their 
day, and have been abandoned, and need not even 
be mentioned here. The ruling theory to-day 
among those who would explain away these things 
is that the appearances were visions, the fruits 
of enthusiasm or ecstasy. There is something 
about the stories which suggests the visionary, 
and on first sight a skeptical reader would readily 
decide that this accounted for them. But a more 
attentive consideration shows that they cannot be 
classed with common visions. Some of the essen- 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 147 

tial conditions of enthusiasm or ecstasy are 
persistently absent. Moreover, the disciples 
themselves were subject to visions, and believed 
in their reality, yet they clearly distinguish 
between these appearances of Jesus and what they 
called visions. The women at the sepulchre were 
said to have had a vision of angels, but when 
Jesus appeared this was a different sort of phe- 
nomenon. The early church was full of visions, 
and visions of Jesus were frequent. But for 
some reason the first eight or ten appearances 
before Pentecost were always kept in a class by 
themselves, except that Paul, who frequently had 
visions, claimed that one of these was different 
from the rest, and belonged to the same class with 
the few earlier ones. Yet this claim Paul could 
never get more than half recognized. 

This distinction between the first few appear- 
ances of the risen Jesus and the thousands of 
visions seen is so strongly, and yet so uncon- 
sciously and naively drawn, that it can have been 
neither an accident nor an invention. While 
these appearances have something of the vision 
in them, they have also a very positive element 
which does not belong to the vision, and the 
testimony to this survives in the accounts after 
skeptical criticism has done all it honestly can do. 
This element in such alleged visions is unpre- 
cedented, and the contradictions and inconsis- 
tencies in the representation of this, at least in 



148 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

the earlier accounts, are not more than mi^ht 

7 o 

be expected in the effort to tell of an unprece- 
dented thing. 

Now it is to be observed that it seems to have 
been the unprecedented element in these appear- 
ances which gave to them their peculiar power 
over the disciples. Although these disciples were 
subject to visions and believed in them, their prac- 
tical mental and moral equipoise was such as to 
prevent their being betrayed by them, as the day- 
dreams of a healthy child do not prevent his living 
a sound objective life. The vision came and went, 
and left them the same men they were. These ap- 
pearances of Jesus were facts to them, and pro- 
duced the same sort of effect upon their lives that 
facts could do. We know that they lacked the 
critical acumen to distinguish visions from facts, 
but we know that they did not lack the practical 
instinct. Everywhere else in their lives their 
practical instinct stood by them. Here in the 
exercise of their practical instinct they treated the 
appearances of Jesus as facts ; that is, as though 
the unprecedented element which distinguished 
them from visions was an objective element. 

Not only, therefore, did the history before and 
after lead us to expect that something unprece- 
dented would occur, but the alleged accounts, even 
in spite of all that skeptical criticism can do with 
them, bear testimony that something unprece- 
dented did occur. 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 149 

Another question now presents itself, Do the 
alleged accounts or the history bear testimony, and 
is it concurrent testimony, to the nature of the 
unprecedented element? The one persistent thing 
in the testimony, the one thing which will not be 
explained away is, that Jesus appeared objectively 
to them. He had a strange appearance, so that 
the term " body " could not be applied to him in 
quite the current sense, but all the marks of per- 
sonal identity were there when demanded. Many 
details of the testimony are conflicting and waver- 
ing, so that they cannot be accepted by one to 
whom belief involves the necessity of forming 
coherent and consecutive mental images. But 
they do not conflict or waver upon the one point 
that, when Jesus appeared, howsoever he got there, 
he gave sufficient proof that it was he, and not his 
ghost, who was there. It is to be remembered 
that to these disciples the personality was insepa- 
rably associated with what we call the body, and 
what they called the spirit was a mere shadow of 
the man himself. We have succeeded, or imagine, 
rightly or wrongly, that we have, in dissociating 
the idea of personality from the body, and allying 
it with a supposed separable soul or spirit. Re- 
membering that the disciples had not performed 
this feat, it was inconceivable that Jesus himself 
in his proper person should appear otherwise than 
as Jesus in the body. Hence the essence of the 
testimony to his bodily appearance is that Jesus, 



150 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

as real and undeniable a person as he was in life, 
and the same person, appeared to them. 

How about the requirements of the historical 
situation? It is an interval between the suprem- 
acy of Jesus as the living Master, and the wholly 
equal and equally personal supremacy of Jesus as 
the glorified Lord, the source of the new spirit. 
In both cases it is a sovereignty of love and great- 
ness. But there is a difference : the one is the 
sovereignty of the man himself, the other is that 
of the man represented fully and adequately by 
the spirit which proceeded from him. We may 
be sure, then, that in the interval the one thing 
which persisted was Jesus, sovereign by virtue of 
greatness and love. There are only two conceiv- 
able ways for Jesus to maintain that supremacy 
on earth : one is the way in which he maintained 
it before his death, the other the way he maintains 
it since Pentecost. But here is an interval when 
we know he maintained it in neither of these two 
conceivable ways, yet he maintained it. He must, 
then, have maintained it in some way inconceiv- 
able ; and what is inconceivable, yet real, gives 
birth to a set of inconsistent and disjointed ex- 
periences, combining the character of visions with 
that of perception, alternating a stunned half -sen- 
sibility with a surprised supersensibility. It is to 
be presumed, upon the basis of the historical sit- 
uation, that something like this occurred during 
that interregnum. 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 151 

That is precisely what the stories say occurred. 
Most of the time the disciples were, according to 
their own account, in a half-dazed condition, going 
about mechanically as though the anterior brain- 
lobes had been removed ; gradually from habit 
and necessity drifting back into their old occupa- 
tions. But every now and then the Master, whose 
supremacy was only asleep, and who had actually 
come to take the place of their higher brain-lobes, 
and to be the coordinating principle of their lives, 
— this Master was from time to time present as 
really as ever in life, though in a different and 
elusive form. If we say that the form was deter- 
mined by subjective conditions, we are only saying 
in scientific language what has always been said, 
when it was explained that Jesus had control over 
the appearance of his resurrection body, and 
adapted it to the conditions of their recognition. 

It will be said, however, that if Jesus appeared 
in this way, in forms determined, like those of 
visions, by subjective conditions, we are back upon 
the basis of the theory of visions ; that the influ- 
ence of Jesus persisted and produced occasional 
illusions in the minds of the disciples, until at 
length it culminated in the Pentecostal effusion. 

Here we come to the point where it must be ad- 
mitted that the belief in the actual appearance of 
Jesus after death, as distinguished from a mere 
vision of him, must forever be the one esoteric 
faith ; the faith of the disciples of Jesus, and not 



152 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

of others. It is significant, and a testimony to the 
truthfulness of the narratives, that Jesus is never 
said to have appeared to any but his disciples, 
those already in sympathy ; only in the exceptional 
case of Paul, and there antipathy combined with a 
state of spiritual equilibrium served much the 
same purpose as sympathy. If the difference be- 
tween disciples of Jesus and others is as radical 
as it has always been preached to be, then the fact 
that Jesus appeared only to disciples rather stands 
in the way of convincing others of his resurrection 
until they have first become his disciples. Let us 
ask ourselves what discipleship with Jesus does 
and does not mean, and why, if a thing be true, it 
can be known to be true only by disciples of his. 

In the first place, true discipleship with Jesus 
does not mean a surrender of any of the rights of 
judgment, a benumbing of any of the sensibilities, 
a weakening of the will, a belittlement of the man 
in any way. It simply means the free and intelli- 
gent choice of Jesus as the best guide to life and 
thought, — guide, not dictator. It means obedi- 
ence in the things where obedience commends it- 
self to the highest reason. So discipleship begins. 
But as discipleship goes on, it comes to a point 
where it must either stop or accept Jesus as the 
Christ. Jesus cannot always continue in the posi- 
tion of a Socrates or a Marcus Aurelius ; he must 
become the Christ to us, or we must turn back. 
Some day he will lead us off to the boundaries of 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 153 

our little world, testing our fidelity as we follow 
him ; and then turning sharply upon us he will 
demand, " Who say ye that I am ? " And unless 
we answer that he is the Christ, the son of the 
Eternal, he will dismiss us from his company. 
But what is a Christ ? A Christ is the universe 
of reality in an individual form, in a human per- 
sonage. The Christ-fact in the world's history is 
that fact in the apprehension of which we appre- 
hend the heart of the Eternal Mystery ; in obeying 
which we obey the promptings of the Eternal ; in 
trusting which we trust the Eternal. For ages 
this Christ-fact, this answer to the problem of the 
universe, had been evolving itself out of the chaos 
of the phenomenal world, which was groaning and 
travailing, waiting to bring forth in the fullness of 
time the Son, — the eternally begotten. If Jesus 
was, as without question he believed himself to be, 
that eternally begotten Christ-fruit, then to him 
who apprehends that, the whole complexion of the 
universe changes. Jesus becomes henceforth the 
supreme reality, and everything else becomes only 
relatively real ; whatever is essential to the reality 
of Jesus becomes essentially real ; and whatever is 
only incidental to the reality of Jesus becomes only 
incidentally real. Where the essential reality of 
Jesus is concerned, the vision becomes essentially 
real. 

Therefore if Jesus is, as we say, the Christ, the 
posthumous relation of Jesus to the world is dif- 



154 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

ferent from that of every other man. If we believe 
that he is the Christ, we cannot maintain that be- 
lief except on the basis of a faith that he still lives, 
and bears a relation to the world, not simply in his 
posthumous influence, but in his proper person. 
We cannot hold him to be the Christ without 
loving him and trusting his love ; but what love 
or trust can there be to a posthumous influence ? 
We are not the lovers of the dead, but of the liv- 
ing : love is the highest and supremest interrela- 
tion of the living with the living. We are pre- 
pared, with Peter at Pentecost, to stand up and 
declare that the resurrection is an a priori neces- 
sity, — " Whom God hath raised up," said Peter, 
" because it was not possible that he could be 
holden of death." If he was the Christ, — and 
Peter was willing to stake everything, even the 
evidence of his senses, even the reality of the ex- 
ternal world upon it, — if he was the Christ, it 
was not possible that he should be holden of death. 
" Whom God hath raised up." Jesus himself 
knew that that which lay beyond death must be 
left to God, and we may do the same, — only 
premising that, even if the appearances of Jesus 
are explainable according to the laws of psychol- 
ogy, they are not less God's work, and the fact 
need not contradict the assertion of their objective 
validity. 

It is at this very point where the issue must 
be settled, whether this universe in which we live 



THE PBINCE OF LIFE. 155 

is a universe of atoms or a universe of persons : 
whether persons, we ourselves, and those whom 
we love and believe in and hope for, are only the 
products of atomic development, and not able to 
survive atomic disintegration ; or whether we, you 
and I, our mothers and our fathers, our brothers 
and our sisters, our wives and husbands and chil- 
dren and lovers, are real and persistent, and the 
atomic world a mere phenomenon. For death we 
know to be a supreme event in the atomic world. 
If that is the real world, then death is the supreme 
event, the end of all existence. But love and 
faith and hope cannot consent to have death the 
supreme event. If, therefore, the supreme reality 
is the atomic world, men must curse it in the 
name of love and faith and hope. If, however, 
Jesus be the Christ, then he stands for the supreme 
reality, and he stands for it in the name of love 
and faith and hope ; in the name of home, of par- 
ents, of brothers and sisters and wives and chil- 
dren and lovers ; he champions them all. When 
he goes to meet death, the champion of the atomic 
world, he wears their favors and does battle for 
them ; and if he falls, down go they all. We are 
not men, then, we are things, chattels, slaves of a 
heartless, a loveless, a hopeless despot ; let us not 
form homes, for the auction-block of death will 
disperse them forever ; let us not cherish hopes, 
for they will only leave an aching void. But, but, 
— if Jesus, the Christ, the representative of our 



156 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

race, be stronger than death, then we build love 
and hope and faith on the eternal foundations. 

Friends, I am bound to say, as an honest man, 
that the proof of the resurrection, so far as the 
mere direct testimony goes, is only sufficient to 
give a choice of alternatives. There is good evi- 
dence of an empty grave ; but how it was emptied, 
— an empty grave is an empty grave, — that is all. 
He is not here, — and here, therefore, my faith 
cannot rest. 

There is satisfactory evidence that the disciples 
believed that they saw him, — and all that. The 
evidence hangs with the probabilities and improba- 
bilities even in the balance, to be decided according 
to my choice or rejection of Jesus as my supreme 
reality. I justify my right to choose at this part- 
ing of the roads. If I do not choose, still the 
grave is empty, — the whole world of heaven and 
earth is a grave, and it is all empty — empty — 
empty. If I choose him as the Christ, I acclaim 
that " God hath raised him up, because it was not 
possible that he should be holden of death," and 
the same faith which proclaims his invincibility 
declares my own, and that of all who are my world 
to me. I am a free man now, I live with the eter- 
nities in range. He that believeth shall not make 
haste. I take time to build my life as it should 
be built. Death may come to-day ; it may delay 
half a century, — I live all the same, for death is 
now to me an incident. I have given the lie to 



THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 157 

the supreme affirmation of the physical world. 
Now I can cherish love, — I can found a home, — 
I can conceive great plans. Die and leave them ? 
No; I shall sleep a hundred times, but wake to 
carry forward my plans. I have faith that the 
man I call the Christ is a living man. Hence the 
Being beyond and above all, the Inscrutable 
One, is a living God. I, who through fear of 
death would have been all my lifetime subject to 
bondage, have now put aside the fear of death, 
and now I live, — I live by faith in the Son of 
God, who died for us and rose again, that whether 
living or dying we should be with him. 



X. 

THE ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS. 
That same Jesus. — Acts ii. 32. 

That which was spoken by the prophet Joel, 
and quoted by the apostle from whose epochal 
speech these two words are borrowed, was one only 
of the changes which were rung upon the same 
theme by every prophetic voice of a creation that 
had been groaning and travailing in prophetic 
pangs. Every messenger of hope has declared 
that the low level, the sluggish humdrum of life, 
is abnormal, and that in the last hastening days 
a new impulse shall be imparted, and men and 
women and little children shall wake to healthier 
activities upon higher planes, and to keener relish 
of the diviner privileges of humanity ; that under 
this better stimulus young men and old, boys and 
girls, high and low, shall, in their own several 
ways, discern the deeper issues and the profounder 
realities, speak the soberer truths, and drink the 
more satisfying and exhaustless joys. And the 
prophetic soul of the world has also dreamed that 
this new potency can work nothing short of a revo- 
lution in a social and religious world which is ad- 



THE ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS. 159 

justed to a lower and retrograde ideal. That which 
shall come to pass cannot be less momentous than 
would be a reconstruction of the planetary system, 
a tilting of the plane of the ecliptic, a change in 
the elevation and contour of the continents, an 
alteration in the constitution of the atmosphere ; 
it shall be as though there were wonders in heaven 
above and signs in the earth beneath, the sun 
turned to darkness and the moon to blood before 
that great and notable day of the Lord. The sum 
of all the messages of the men of vision, Hebrew 
and non-Hebrew, is that some such revolution 
must come, involving either as cause, or effect, or 
both, a new manhood and womanhood, and ushered 
in by some hero of redemption, some Messiah or 
new-Creator who should set regenerating potencies 
to work. 

Men and women of this generation, be this 
known unto you and hearken unto these words : 
Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God, ac- 
credited as the agent of supreme creative power 
by the signal way in which he has gathered the 
reins of power into his hands, being by the irre- 
sistible moral necessities, the logical, poetic, dra- 
matic, historical necessities of the case, delivered 
into the power of the established order, and by 
that order with wicked hands, and yet in obedience 
to its own strongest instincts of self-preservation, 
crucified and slain, — this Jesus hath God raised 
up, and made both Lord and Messiah. 



160 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

The old world had come to the crisis of supreme 
success or failure. Successive civilizations had 
been rising and falling more times than is re- 
corded ;• but never had there been in existence less 
than two at once. Now, one had reached its full 
growth, which, while of the same order as the 
others, had, in addition, the evident quality of 
finality. It was the blossom on the tip of the stem. 
Time has made clear to ordinary minds what pro- 
phetic eyes saw then, that Rome had made such 
conquest of the world that she was threatened with 
the dearth of a successor ; that unless some refruc- 
tifying power should appear, her plainly impending 
downfall would leave no elements from which a 
new civilization could arise, and the world would 
be left a parched desert or a noisome jungle. 
Rome was to be to the future a savor of life unto 
life, or of death unto death ; the only hope that it 
would be of life was that she should be conquered 
by some power which could infuse into her, and into 
the world through her, a new vitality, a regenera- 
tive force. Hope, which had so endeared herself 
to men as to make a gospel of the legend of Pan- 
dora's box of troubles, was fading away. The 
glow, which had long ago vanished from the faces 
of the dull millions in the farther Orient, was d}dng 
out among those who until now had kept a greener 
life about the famed shores of the Mediterranean. 
The thirsty sands of disenchantment were rapidly 
encroaching upon the fertile soil and flowing foun- 
tains of youth. 



THE ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS. 161 

Only the " Hope of Israel " survived, a forlorn 
hope enough, but all there was, and with a promise 
if it could get itself fulfilled. The leader of that 
forlorn hope could be none other than the heir to 
the throne of David, the throne of a civilization 
whose creative idea had from the start been the 
hope of the world's redemption. He who could 
climb that throne, and seize that sceptre, and real- 
ize the imperial ambition of which it was the symbol, 
could change the tide of history, and lay the foun- 
dations of an empire of redemption which would 
turn men back from the borders of despair, and raise 
them to be kings and priests unto the Most High. 

It was not only the hope, however, the promise 
and idea of redemption, which had survived. The 
redemptive civilization itself had a real though 
as yet an imperfectly developed existence. The 
Hebrew empire was as genuine of its kind as the 
Roman, and it was of as genuine a kind. The 
throne of David was as real a throne as that of the 
Cassars ; the Messianic potentiality was as tangible 
a thing, to those who had the right sensitiveness 
of touch, as the Roman dominion. The man of 
destiny, therefore, need not appear as a freak of 
nature, to be explained by a deus ex machina, but 
as the ripe fruitage of a living historical move- 
ment, which had never before failed to bring forth 
its hero in the nick of time, and which might be 
expected to obey its own law, and consummate itself 
by giving birth to a Messiah. The pious remnant, 



162 THE IMPEBIAL CHRIST. 

therefore, who looked for redemption in Israel, 
were not mere mystics and visionaries ; but with 
true, even scientific insight they built their faith 
upon a firm historical basis. It was not asked of 
faith then, and it never has been fairly asked of 
it, that it make a virtue of being indifferent to 
such a foundation. 

Though a fruit of history in as full a sense as it 
is possible for any man with a free will to be, and 
though manifestly chosen of the Inscrutable, none 
the less was Jesus the self -elected heir to the throne 
of David. Splendid to the verge of madness was 
the self-assertion of the young peasant, with his 
provincial garb and brogue, who set out to make 
himself master of the world's destinies by taking 
upon himself the office of the Hebrew Messiahship. 
It cannot indeed be called unexampled, except in 
degree ; for in this also he was intensely human, 
and followed precedents of which history is full. 
Neither was he, though a peasant, an uneducated 
man. He had that education, a better than which 
can scarcely be given to a youth even now, perfect 
familiarity with the Hebrew Scriptures, an educa- 
tion which forbade the narrow mind or the limited 
vision, an education which could not but map out 
an empire in his brain. 

Yet, though thus equipped, Jesus could not at 
the start foresee clearly the whole path upon which 
he had entered. He knew that his foresight, as 
any man's must be, was limited ; but he had the 



THE ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS. 163 

full courage of his insight and instinct, and the 
event has justified that courage. On the day 
when he stopped at the boundary near Cassarea 
Philippi, and determined not to cross it to go to 
the Dispersion or to the Gentiles, but to return to 
Jerusalem, and make his crown of thorns and his 
throne of the cross, he made a choice upon which 
henceforth turned the hinges of eternity, a choice 
worthy of a God, and of such a God as the world 
had hardly yet dreamed about. 

It is always to be remembered, and recalled as 
often as forgotten, that Jesus did not abate one 
jot of his princely claims when he took a step 
which he knew would lead to an ignominious death. 
The passion journey was a royal progress. The 
halo of the transfiguration nowhere quite fades, 
though it sometimes seems to render more visible 
the cloud of gloom that settled darker and denser. 
He inarched on in solemn majesty before the awe- 
struck disciples, who were only dragged heavy- 
footed behind him by the chain of a despairing 
loyalty. His own choice drew aside sometimes 
the curtain of darkness, as when he planned the 
Palm Sunday procession, as an innocent ruse 
by which he might enter the royal city in the only 
guise in which he could consistently enter it, — as 
a King. Then, though his followers lost the mean- 
ing of it again, he did not ; for as he stood on the 
slope of Olivet and saw on some other knoll — 
probably that upon which afterward his own cross 



164 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

stood — the idle crowds attracted toward the scene 
of execution, he said with sure prescience, " I, if I 
be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." He did 
not pretend to know how this would be, or when. 
To him also, as to other men, the gates through 
which he was to pass were opaque. Times and 
seasons were in the Father's hands, and he did not 
pretend to understand them. But his magnificent 
confidence in his Father and himself permitted him 
to affirm, that not only would death not put a 
period to his Messianic triumph, but that it should 
itself become a means to that triumph, that he 
should lead captivity captive. And so he had gath- 
ered together his little group of followers, and made 
his will, and signed and sealed it in a significant 
ceremony, bequeathing not only his life, but his 
disgrace and death as a priceless and redeeming 
legacy to his race. Said some one of a brilliant 
military movement, " It was magnificent, but it 
was not war." This disposition which Jesus made 
of his death was magnificent, and it was war. It 
was a stroke which broke the serried ranks of hell, 
for he made a breach through which the forces of 
salvation have poured resistlessly. And so the 
conspiracy of the established order, to bury his 
Messianic pretensions out of sight in contumely, 
had come to naught. The cross was transfigured 
till it shone with a light which attracted all 
eyes ; and presently all roads began to lead that 
way. 



THE ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS. 165 

But that to which attention is directed by our 
text is, that he who thus laid down his life has 
himself taken it again. That same Jesus reap- 
pears and persists. His personality, instead of 
being merged in the cause, like that of other 
martyrs, or enduring only in the form of a post- 
humous influence, a name, reappears after a 
little, and persists and enters into human affairs 
in a manner most unique. We must not attempt 
here to say how this is, or to draw any picture, 
or weave any argument to show how intelligible 
or conceivable or credible may have been the 
alleged occurrences of that Easter morning. It 
is a proper thing to do, though he who attempts 
it will soon be made to feel that he has under- 
taken too much. 

Let us pass by the initial steps to the rehabili- 
tation of the personal Jesus as a factor in the lives 
of the few disciples, and rather observe that " that 
same Jesus " persists in history and in contempo- 
rary life. Through these unpromising disciples 
a new power bursts forth, clearing at first a little 
space, then reaching out and bringing to its ser- 
vice some of the greatest men who have lived. It 
conquers and bends to its purposes Greek thought 
and Roman administrative genius, until in a few 
centuries it has become the one redeeming element 
through which the old world can perpetuate itself 
and influence modern times. It brought forth 
institutions and constitutions, literatures and phi- 



166 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

losophies, and dogmas and systems. When the 
northern heirs of the future climbed the southern 
wall of the Alps to seize their inheritance, they 
found little worth carrying away which was not 
the creation or the salvage of that same Jesus who 
had been crucified. It was through him that, 
when they put to their lips the chalice of Rome, 
they drank more health than poison. 

It was his personal work. In whatever his per- 
sonality held direct sway Christianity was strong 
and healthful ; in whatever case ecclesiastical or 
other organizations, theological dogmas, philosoph- 
ical systems, or anything else displaced the per- 
sonal Jesus, it became unutterably weak ; so that 
that kingdom of redemption which has steadily 
grown in greatness is the personal empire of that 
same Jesus, until to-day he is exalted, — I do not 
say that he ought to be, I simply say that he is 
exalted, — to-day to the right hand of the Su- 
preme Majesty on high. It is neither exaggera- 
tion nor irreverence to say that his power over 
the feelings, the thought, the destinies, of men is 
equal to that of a God, and the potency of his 
kingdom is equal to and identical with whatever 
may most fittingly be called the kingdom of God, 
and his name has grown to be synonymous with 
that of the Hebrew Jehovah, whom the whole 
world admits to be the God most nobly conceived, 
— in fact, Jesus shares the throne of God. I bid 
you mark it. Philosophy and theology, dogma- 



THE ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS. 167 

tism and metaphysics all aside, it is the most vital 
and urgently significant fact of contemporary life 
and history that that same Jesus, who was cruci- 
fied, sits in a place not lower than at the right 
hand of the Eternal Majesty, that he has become 
the one mediator between an Inscrutable Godhead 
and a fallen but divine manhood, and that no 
other name is any longer mentioned under heaven 
among men, as that by which they can be saved. 
His position as the Mediator, the one Redeemer, the 
vicegerent of God, the eternally begotten Son of 
the Eternal Father, asks no other vindication ; it 
is a de facto position. There he is ! 

" That same Jesus," then, whom the Inscrutable 
has raised up to be both Lord and Christ, permit- 
ting him to absorb his own specific title as the 
God of the Messianic nation ; " that same Jesus," 
who has grown into so intimate union with all 
pious hopes and all guilty fears, that they subsist 
no longer apart from the thought of him ; " that 
same Jesus," with whom every oppressor of the 
weak, every defrauder of the ignorant, every se- 
ducer of the frail, must reckon as with a big elder 
brother ; " that same Jesus," is the most potent 
single factor in all modern history; he is the 
most real, tangible, influential, and actually live 
man in this nation to-day. It is saying a good 
deal, but it is true, that he will have more to do 
than any other one man with the next election ; 
he is the most vital and urgent fact in the cor- 



168 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

porate and the individual lives of us all and 
each. 

Now that same Jesus as the chief contempo- 
rary fact cannot fail to lead the thoughtful mind 
to ponder upon its relation to the supreme truth, 
for every fact has its import in the scheme of 
truth. We can hardly rest in fact, though in this 
age of science that is what we first aim at. But 
we would go on to the truth, greater than fact, 
which by it is signified. Before I begin to con- 
template Jesus, I am bound to think of truth as in 
all its dimensions greater and broader and higher 
and deeper than fact, fact being created and truth 
belonging to the Creator. But as I look upon 
Jesus, and the longer I look, the more it grows 
and grows upon me, as it grew upon the apostle 
Paid in his later days, while he sat in prison writ- 
ing to his beloved fellow-disciples and spiritual 
children, and as it grew too upon the aged John, 
— that Jesus has gathered to himself and personi- 
fied and identified with himself forever a fact 
which transcends and antedates creation : that 
he is " the image of the invisible God, the first- 
born of all creation," in whom were all things 
created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, 
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or 
dominions, or principalities, or powers, and he is 
before all things and in him all things consist, 
that in all things he might have the preeminence, 
since it hath pleased the Inscrutable Source that 



THE EXTHBOXEMEXT OF JESUS. 169 

in him should all fullness dwell, since he has 
been raised from the dead and set at God's' own 
right hand in heavenly places, far above all prin- 
cipality and power and might and dominion, and 
every name that is named, not only in this world, 
but in that which is to come, and all things have 
been put under his feet. 

But when I turn upon myself, and try to realize 
the dimensions to which Jesus has thus grown in 
my thought, I am astounded. I have gone beyond 
my depth, — and yet am not drowned ; I bathe 
in and am buoyed up by this divine fact, I drink 
deep of it as of a river of truth. It is the elixir of 
life. I care no louger for metaphysics, because I 
have a physics which goes as far as metaphysics 
ever projected itself. I find God manifest in flesh ; 
and then I remember that Jesus, with his splendid 
daring, once said, " I am the truth : " fact and 
truth in him are one, — it is the living mystery of 
the incarnate God. 

I can never again be the man I was before I 
gained a glimpse of this worshipful mystery : I 
am changed by it for better or for worse. Every 
time the glimpse is repeated a new access of change 
for better or for worse comes to me, whether I will 
or not ; it is a savor of life unto life or of death unto 
death. If Jesus be a fact of such transcendent 
proportions in my inner and my outer world, then 
unless I live as though he were, I am living a life 
which is out of harmony with acknowledged reali- 



170 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

ties. Men of the world talk a good deal of the 
inconsistency and hypocrisy of the followers of 
Jesus. But few of these same men of the world 
could conscientiously deny that Jesus is the su- 
preme fact in human life, yet they live as though 
he were a trifle, represented, it may be, by one 
half of one per cent, of their interest in their in- 
vestments in life. To know that Jesus is the chief 
fact, and to live as though he were not, is to live a 
plain falsehood. " Who is a hypocrite," exclaims 
the apostle John, " who is a liar, but he that ignor- 
eth the lordship of Jesus ? " No ; if I believe 
that " that same Jesus " who was crucified is to- 
day both Lord and Messiah in the world in which 
I live, whatever theory or want of theory I may 
have as to how he came to hold such a position, I 
am bound, on pain of the charge of hypocrisy and 
falsehood, to acknowledge him in the adjustment 
of all my relationships ; and I have no more any 
business to pose, as I may have been doing, as a 
man of honor and integrity, until I have begun in 
sincerity to obey that truth. My conscience must 
either be silenced to my awful detriment, or it 
must accuse and condemn and despise me, until I 
adjust myself to this prime fact of life. This was 
the crux of the situation of Saul of Tarsus before 
his sudden conversion. This is the prick against 
which you self-righteous men of the world are 
kicking. 

It is not possible for one to recognize the im- 



THE ENTHBONEMENT OF JESUS. 171 

portance of the relationship which Jesus sustains 
to human life as it is to-day, without admitting 
that he will one day be compelled to reckon with 
it in judgment ; so that we sing with sincerity in 
the Te Deum, " We believe that Thou shalt come 
to be our Judge." Yet the original Jesus of Naza- 
reth justly described his attitude toward men when 
he said that he had not come to condemn the world 
but to save it, and he rightly pictured himself as 
judging and condemning or approving men only 
as one of the incidents to his work as a Saviour, 
making common cause with the weak and unfor- 
tunate and fallen. And " that same Jesus," who 
thus represented himself as primarily a Redeemer, 
holds the same attitude toward the world to-day as 
he did then ; he is the same Jesus. So true is this, 
that the consciences of most of us respond to the 
suggestion of the apostle Peter, who thought the 
most heinous charge which could be brought 
against men at the judgment to be that they had 
despised and trifled with the solicitations of a 
would-be Saviour. We examine all the saving 
traits in ourselves and our environments, and we 
see that they are either his original creation, or 
that they have been absorbed and are being pre- 
served by him. A pious mother, or one whose in- 
herited qualities once grew in the soil of piety, is 
a good part of the store of saving grace to many, 
— and the lineage of that kind of motherhood is 
well known. Through institutions and literatures 



172 THE UIPEBIAL CHE1ST. 

created or preserved by him the atmosphere we 
breathe has been saturated with moral healthful- 
ness that braces us within and without. Whatever 
we are that is good or praiseworthy, we owe to that 
grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. Who 
would willingly allow to be lost out of his charac- 
ter all that graciousness and that fineness of fibre 
which is owing to Jesus, to have the savingness of 
Jesus eliminated from him ? Not one would dare 
to choose it. Yet many will let it come gradually 
by the neglect of so great salvation. Neither would 
any quite dare to enter consciously upon a course 
which was expected to eventuate in emancipation 
from the redeeming power of Jesus as it exists and 
acts in his environment. Yet such emancipation 
must be possible ; it lies in the nature of the rela- 
tionships of free personalities. We also are sons 
of God, with sovereignties upon which Jesus him- 
self, as God's vicegerent, upon which God himself, 
cannot infringe. Even Jesus the supreme Saviour 
cannot remain in us or about us indefinitely as an 
unbidden guest. 

But while the presence of this Jesus is the su- 
preme saving fact to him to whom he is present, 
in equal measure is his absence the most moment- 
ous fact to him to whom he must be absent ; so 
that, whether present or absent, he is the supreme 
fact to every human life. Our attitude toward 
this fact cannot change its dimensions, for it is 
objective, and as independent of us as the existence 



THE ENTHRONEMENT OF JESUS. 173 

and dimensions of the sun. Our difference of 
attitude can only change the nature of its effect 
upon us : that effect is equally momentous whether 
for condemnation or for redemption. This is a 
faithful saying and worthy to be kept in continual 
remembrance. 

But finally, let us observe that not only is the 
sum of all that is saving in us and about us to 
be ascribed to that same Jesus who was crucified, 
but that in him there is a salvation even to the 
uttermost. He is a saving fact of absolutely fun- 
damental import. He is the cardinal fact for the 
interpretation of the deep questions which obtrude 
themselves upon us, whether we will or no. We 
must from time to time touch and confront eternal 
realities ; and when we do, we find him there, so 
that we see the fitness of his appellation as the 
Son of the Eternal. The mission of love takes us 
into the presence of these realities when it bids us 
go with the loved one until pushed back by the 
inexorable separating hand of death, and as we 
peer into the utter darkness we are made to feel 
that we have an infinite stake in eternity. Then, 
if never before, we send for some fellow-man, or, 
possibly with a touch of superstition, for one who 
claims some preterhuman priestly unction, to stand, 
by the cold clay and utter a taunt of defiance to the 
great enemy, — " O grave, where is thy victory ! 
O death, where is thy sting ! Thanks be unto the 
Eternal through our Lord Jesus Christ," — and 



174 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

then to turn to us with the cheering, " Wherefore, 
beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, immovable, al- 
ways abounding in the fullness of life, forasmuch 
as ye know that the Eternal is not the God of the 
dead but of the living." Such words testify, upon 
the authority of a faith more or less explicit, that 
that same Jesus who entered the portals of death 
and descended into Hades has done so only that 
he might the more certainly and triumphantly 
ascend into the heights of heaven, that he has won 
the victory of life, and that because he lives, we 
and ours, those same loved ones, shall live also. 
Thus we acknowledge the power of his resurrec- 
tion. 



XL 



JESUS, TEACHER AND LORD. 
To whom coming- as unto a living- stone. — 1 Peter ii. 4. 

Although the evangelical historians took no 
special pains to report the sayings and doings of 
Jesus in the precise order in which they occurred, 
yet enough of the outlines of that order are clear 
to show that he gave a fair trial to the plan of 
saving men and restoring manhood by winning 
them over to his ideas, before he undertook the 
bolder and more regal method of binding them to 
himself, and building them into himself and him- 
self into them. His first scheme was to make 
them a gift of his idea, the idea of the divine 
fatherhood and of God's parental kingdom, and to 
cause them to feel its saving force. His riper 
plan, the product of experience, was to make a 
gift of himself to men and for them, to identify 
himself with them in their failures and successes, 
and thus to cause them to bow to the authority 
of his own person. Beginning as a teacher, a 
prophet, he found it impracticable to complete 
his work until he also became a priest and a king, 
and in the fulfillment of these three functions he 



176 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

entered into the fullest possible relations of sol- 
idarity with the race. 

It is here that many men, certain whole sects of 
men, indeed, who would be his followers, part 
company with him or with his biographers. Some 
of them admit that the authors of the Gospels are 
correct in saying that at a certain point he turned 
aside from the path of a prophet, which his great 
forerunner had trod, and in which he had fol- 
lowed till then, and consciously took up a priestly 
and a royal mission. 

But they think that when he did it he made 
the mistake of his life ; that it is the fly in the 
ointment which spoils all. Some such opinion 
was held by Eenan, that, at the time when he 
began to put his personality into his work and 
attract attention to it, he took leave of his better 
self and became henceforth a mixture of fanatic 
aud pretender ; that if he had had the moral 
equipoise to carry himself along to the end on the 
plane of a rabbi, Ins whole career would have 
been more of a success. Yet even those persons 
who believe that his true mission was only to 
teach, and that he committed a serious blunder 
when he exceeded that function, still maintain 
that as a teacher he is unsurpassed, and that 
the force of his teaching is not impaired by what 
they regard as his own inconsistency; that the 
world owes to him the ideas which he imparted 
to it during his earlier ministry, and that these 
are saving ideas. 



JESUS, TEACHER AND LORD. 177 

The more common attribute, however, of those 
who would call Jesus rabbi, but not Lord, who 
would use him, but not identify themselves with 
him, is to charge the error to his biographers or 
his apostles, rather than to himself, and to say 
that where it is asserted that he claimed a per- 
sonal supremacy, there the legendary begins. That 
he preached the Sermon on the Mount they agree. 
They deny that he ever said, " I, if I be lifted 
up, will draw all men unto me," or " I and my 
Father are one," or " All power is given unto me 
in heaven and on earth," or " Hereafter ye shall 
see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of 
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." 
These sayings appear to them to be but embellish- 
ments of the story of his life. The idea of his 
exaltation to the right hand of power seems to 
have originated with the ajoostolic chronicler, and 
not with himself. This determination to make 
out that either Jesus himself or his disciples were 
mistaken in claiming for him any other place than 
that of a teacher was the work of what was 
known in this country, one or two generations ago, 

as the liberal movement. 

* 

Its contention was, that if we could break 
through the crust of the traditional and dogmatic 
view of Jesus, it would be found, on an unbiased 
investigation of the facts, that he actually stands 
to humanity, not as its king, not as its priest, but 
simply as its most perfect prophet or teacher ; 



178 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

that he is not the shepherd of men, putting forth 
his sheep and then going before them, but the 
preacher putting forth his ideas. And they be- 
lieve that if the matter were made the subject of 
free inquiry, this would be the verdict. They 
therefore became the champions of free thought 
and critical inquiry ; and those to whom the lord- 
ship of Jesus was a precious faith were betrayed 
thereby into becoming the opponents of such 
freedom of inquiry. In that way the notion that 
Jesus was nothing more than the world's greatest 
teacher became associated in most minds with the 
important right of liberty of thought, while the 
doctrine that he was far more closely identified 
with humanity as its Redeemer and Lord was sup- 
posed to depend upon the repression of thought. 

This was a tragedy of errors. The people who 
cried out most loudly for freedom of inquiry 
seldom took the pains to exercise that freedom, 
but assumed, without inquiry, that they knew 
what would be the result of it, and boldly an- 
nounced as the product of free inquiry what had 
never been made the subject of adequate inquiry 
of any kind. And on the other hand, those who 
were frightened into obstructing investigation 
were needlessly alarmed. For when at length a 
few, without advertising their demand for liberty, 
took occasion to inquire, with full abandon, into 
the facts, it began to appear that Jesus' position 
as the Saviour and Kino: of men would bear 



JESUS, TEACHER AND LORD. 179 

investigation as fully as liis position as the teacher 
of men. And so the negations of the old liberal 
party are denied, and the affirmations of the old 
conservative party are reinforced, by the actual 
exercise of the right of critical investigation, 
which the former demanded and the latter re- 
fused. No man has a right to-day to call him- 
self a liberal, that is, an advocate of freedom of 
inquiry, simply because he happens to deny the 
lordship of Jesus ; and no man who affirms that 
lordship is, for that reason, open to the accusa- 
tion of not having exercised full freedom of 
inquiry. The doctrinal issues between liberalism 
and conservatism have wholly changed in these 
last days. 

Actually, to-day, the fact that Jesus has both 
claimed and gained the position of supereminence 
in the world's affairs as a personal factor is to be 
affirmed on the basis of the severest and freest 
historical criticism. Historical science calls Jesus 
Lord ; and if it be true, as the apostle says, that 
no man can call Jesus " Lord " but by the Holy 
Ghost, then historical science is to be reckoned 
as one of the instruments of the Holy Spirit. It 
is true that this science utters no dictum as to 
his right to be the world's Lord. It only declares 
that he is its Lord. The verdict of history con- 
cerns his de facto, not his de jure lordship. 
Whether he ought to be or not, he is identified 
with this world for its salvation or its perdition. 



180 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

It is learned, even upon a closer examination, that 
there is such a consistency between Jesus' teach- 
ings and his lordship, that one who looks care- 
fully into it is compelled to confess, as men are 
reported to have confessed at the time of the 
Sermon on the Mount, that his teaching is aston- 
ishingly unlike that of scribes ; that, in fact, he 
taught as one having authority ; so that it is not 
possible for one to be logical who elevates him to 
a supreme place as teacher, without at the same 
time, either openly or tacitly, acknowledging him 
as Lord. 

So clear is this becoming that, among those 
who have been exalting him as teacher but de- 
clining to exalt him as Lord, a schism has come. 
One goes back and refuses any longer to acknow- 
ledge his uniqueness or supremacy as a teacher, 
and the other goes far forward toward the en- 
thronement of him as Lord. One turns away 
from him as teacher because he cannot otherwise 
avoid bowing to his kingship ; the other accepts 
the logic of the situation and crowns him king. 

In thus putting his own person at the head of 
the movement for the redemption of men, and 
making loyalty to his person the condition of 
membership in a redeemed society, Jesus acted 
in obedience both to the laws of human nature 
in general, and to the particular laws of that 
course of history which it was his peculiar mis- 
sion to bring to its culmination. More and more 



JESUS, TEACHER AND LORD. 181 

does a knowledge of human nature impress the 
truth that, if manhood is ever redeemed and re- 
placed in its rightful position in relation to 
nature, to God, and to itself, it will be not by 
education alone, but also by a reconciliation which 
shall break the spell of alienation, and by a lead- 
ership which shall hold the loyalty of its will. 
The teacher and the priest will be also the edu- 
cator, but he will have to rule and mediate in 
order that he may educate. 

The world's Moseses have not waited to educate 
the slaves they would redeem from bondage. 
They have won them and led them out of Egypt, 
— ugly, motle} 7 , ignorant herds, — and have started 
them on an educational march, and have died and 
left them as legacies their ideas indeed, but also 
the spirit and power of their personalities. The 
Hebrew history, big with messianism, was to 
bring forth something yet greater than a world's 
rabbi. The Hebrew people knew, the Hebrew 
prophets had seen deeply, and had written their 
visions, which were read in the synagogues every 
Sabbath day, and no darkening exegesis could 
hide the light of it, — that the Christ was to be 
a Prince and a Saviour. Contemporary history 
indeed was suggesting it, for not the Greek, but 
the Roman, not the men of thought, but the men 
of will, were at the head of the world's affairs. 
The people knew, when they saw one greater than 
the greatest rabbi ; and the tribes of men through- 



182 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

out the world to-day know when they see him, 
if they never knew before, that Jesus is greater 
than the greatest teacher : there is a spontane- 
ous worship of Jesus as " Lord " wherever his 
name is known. Burn your creeds, all of them, 
to-day, and dethrone Jesus from his place at the 
right hand of Eternal Majesty, and the loving 
and not witless world's heart will reenthrone and 
re-deify him to-morrow. 



XII. 

THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 

A COMMUNION SERMON. 
The fullness of God. — Ephesians iii. 19. 

This letter of the great Paul — for I shall re- 
gard it as his, though the question is mooted by 
the scholars — was probably written during his 
enforced leisure while waiting to be transferred to 
Rome. Though in prison, he was not isolated. A 
highway from Asia Minor and the west to Jerusa- 
lem passed through Caesarea, and he was in fre- 
quent communication with persons whom he had 
known during his active career. It was the time 
of the long Roman peace, an age of much travel 
and commercial and mental activity, in many ways 
not unlike that in which we live. Like this, too, 
it was an age of cosmopolitanism, gathering its 
ideas, as it did its merchandise, from all parts of 
the world. The apostle, thus in intercourse with 
the world, but forbidden his accustomed activity 
and supported at public expense, was perhaps able 
to enter into a more comprehensively intelligent 
interest in events. He had by natural selection 



184 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

chosen as the scene of his labors in the gospel 
those parts of the world which were fullest of the 
modern spirit and energy. There he had planted 
his churches in the busy whirl of life. It was 
the kind of thing he liked. He believed in men 
and in their doings. He believed in life. He be- 
lieved that the gospel belonged to the living world 
crowded with affairs. He was a Catholic, not a 
Separatist. He grasped that frequent saying of 
Jesus, that he came that men might have life, and 
might have it abundantly. 

It was Paul's rediscovery of this fact that saved 
the gospel from oblivion. The Jewish followers 
of Jesus were tending to become a sect of recluses 
who ran away from life like monks, who practiced 
separating rites, and made a virtue of negations. 
He began his career by proclaiming that every- 
thing was good in its way, that there was room for 
everything, and that the best place to preach the 
gospel was where men were thickest and busiest. 
He struck out for the centres of population and of 
intercourse, and there he planted his churches. 

Asia Minor was in that day the scene of an 
intense life. Upon slavery and monopoly, as to- 
day upon machinery and monopoly, was flourish- 
ing a class endowed with wealth and leisure. Since 
there was no pity for him, the slave took precisely 
the place machinery does to-day. There was a 
prosperous middle class engaged in trade. Disre- 
garding the slave, as they did, society was well- 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 185 

to-do and intelligent. There was a general smat- 
tering of learning. The lecture Lyceum system 
was universal. Men were mentally alert and had 
an itch for novel ideas. Eclecticism was the rage. 
The greater variety of elements one could weave 
into his thought, the more learned he was thought. 
It was a shallow method with most, yet at that 
time anything else would have been more objec- 
tionable. Out of this medley the natural tendency 
of the mind was already beginning to bring a 
species of organic unity. Something of Persian 
dualism and Hindoo theosophy, brought by travel- 
ers, many of them Jews of the dispersion, mingled 
with the wholesomer Hebrew and the saner Greek ; 
and out of it were already beginning to appear 
signs of that which afterward was known as Gnos- 
ticism. It was a combination of philosophy and 
religion and manner of life. As yet it was only 
in the air. Intelligent and sensitive men felt it 
and were aware of its importance. 

Paul knew of it. Indeed, his vigorous preach- 
ing of the philosophy of life had had something to 
do in causing its first crystallizations. Young men 
of open minds and generous impulses visited him 
in prison. Such men were always attracted to 
him by his sturdy manhood and intellectual breadth. 
He could learn from them what was doing in Ephe- 
sus and the other cities of Asia Minor, as we older 
men probe the young fellows from college or from 
the European universities about the freshest thought 



186 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

which has not yet found its way into print. They 
could tell the apostle that which interested him 
exceedingly about the latest philosophical specula- 
tions and the terms which were current. It was 
the age of the gnosis, that is, of science. As yet 
that word meant knowledge in its general sense, 
as we employ, or should employ, the word science. 
It had not become the technical name of a system. 
After the term science, which was meant to indi- 
cate their method, the most common and important 
term was pleroma, or " fullness." All the lyceums 
were occupied in debates about the fullness, some- 
what as a few years ago, while the doctrine of de- 
velopment was still on trial, every class-room dis- 
cussion touched upon evolution. This doctrine of 
the fullness was to the general effect that mind, 
that reason, that wisdom, truth, power, life, so 
abounded as to fill the universe ; so that folly, 
falsehood, weakness, death, unreason, were crowded 
out. It was as yet vague and self -contradictory, a 
medley from the four corners of the earth. Yet 
there was something hopeful about its affirmation 
of the fullness. Men had been content, partly 
because of mental indolence or cowardice, to think 
there was much of emptiness, that in fact the odds 
were on the side of negations. " Oh, to be nothing, 
nothing," they had sighed, and had fled from life 
with its full experiences as though they contami- 
nated. Negations were practiced under the mis- 
take that they were virtues. A conflict was waged 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. ' 187 

between morality, on one hand, and life, hope, 
energy, intelligence, all that was positive in man- 
hood, on the other. Goodness was associated with 
asceticism. This new doctrine affirmed all the 
positives, and declared that the universe was full 
and not empty. Fullness, said these young men, 
fullness was now the word to conjure with. They 
spoke with animation. Their eyes sparkled. It 
was evident they were disposed to be partisans 
of the new doctrine. It was affirmative. It was 
plausible. It was cosmopolitan. It was modern, 
up to date. And the young men liked it. 

It was a critical time for the gospel. If Paul 
had made a mistake at that point, it cannot be 
predicted what would have happened. We know 
by the Fourth Gospel that the churches of Asia 
Minor so far assimilated the new thought as to be 
able to survive without losing touch with the intel- 
lectual world. But if Paul had made a mistake 
at this juncture, and if Christianity had parted 
company with the intellectual world at that time 
in Asia Minor, it is hard to see how it could have 
gathered forces for the conquest of the Roman 
Empire. For be it remembered that, as the Greek 
intellect had conquered Rome, so Christianity con- 
quered Rome, largely by conquering the Greek 
intellect. It was a critical issue, and Paul had 
destinies in his hands. Had he warned the young 
men, as many young men in these days are warned 
concerning modern thought, that they would better 



188 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

let the whole business alone, keep out of the intel- 
lectual whirl, stick to the simple gospel, and let 
the world sweep by them with its unsanctified 
progress, they would at once have divided into 
three parts. The intellectually weak would have 
accepted his advice, the intellectually strong would 
have rejected it and deserted the gospel, the third 
class would consist of those in whose minds would 
be precipitated a conflict with varying results. 
James would have done just that thing. He did 
it so far as his power went. His epistle, full of 
the spirit of Christlikeness and of excellent advice 
against modern evils, especially wealth-worship, 
was nevertheless written with a view to attacking 
modern thought. His pious opinion was that the 
young people of his day were talking too much, 
and would do better to keep their tongues still, 
and not mix up with worldly philosophy. Give 
alms and keep out of worldly things, was his pre- 
scription for piety. Now James had a part to 
play, and he played it well. But it was fortunate 
for the future of Christianity that he was not in 
Paul's place that day. The church which was 
under his influence anchored where it was, and 
waited for the millennium ; and before the mil- 
lennium came it died. Paul's churches undertook 
to bring the millennium ; and when it comes it 
will have been partly their work. 

When Paul heard about this modern doctrine of 
the fullness, and saw how much these young men 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 189 

were interested in it, lie became interested too, 
partly on their account, and partly because be was 
like them. Pie had no objection to bringing things 
up to date. It was a mark of respect to the past 
to assume that it could reproduce itself in a new 
and living present. Not its mummy but its pro- 
geny was to be preserved. Other things being 
equal, the latest should be the best. And this 
doctrine of the fullness was particularly attractive 
to him. He never did like emptiness and nega- 
tions. The touch-nots, taste-nots, handle-nots of 
some classes of moralists annoyed him beyond 
measure. He had suffered privations enough him- 
self, but to him they were not privations ; he had 
chosen them, but not as such. They were simply 
the crowding out of the less by the greater. His 
celibacy was apostolic, not monkish. He was too 
busy and too adventurous to think it right he 
should compromise a woman in his destiny. He 
disclaimed any virtue in it. His virtue consisted 
in the things he did, not in the things he abstained 
from. His life was full. Even his privations, his 
hunger and nakedness, were part of the wealth of 
life to him. " Oh, the depth of the riches ! " he 
exclaims. 

Because of his own love of a full life, Paul saw 
no reason why he should antagonize this new phi- 
losophy of the fullness. He wished to know more 
about it. He questioned his visitors closely. New 
ideas were published in those days chiefly by word 



190 THE IMPERIAL CHE 1ST 

of mouth, and hence these young men were good 
conversationalists. When did this new philosophy 
of life begin to be talked about ? It was not long 
after he left Asia Minor. The orators and itiner- 
ant lecturers who had been accustomed to deal 
with trivial and miscellaneous topics, depending 
for their popularity upon the brilliancy of their 
oratorical flights, the winningness of their tones, 
and the originality of their diction and illustra- 
tions, seemed to turn toward more serious dis- 
course, and to attempt actually to say something 
that applied to life. " Ah ! " said Paul ; " do you 
think they were forced to this by the competition 
of the preachers of the gospel? " The young men 
had not thought of it, but confessed that the sug- 
gestion was reasonable because, until they took to 
philosophizing in serious mood, they had been 
losing ground while the churches were gaining. 
" As to their ideas," again said Paul, " did any of 
them ever hear me, or more particularly the bril- 
liant Barnabas preach ? " " They were too proud 
to listen openty," was replied, " but we happen to 
know that many of them listened behind pillars, 
or sent their pupils to take notes." " So it would 
seem," said Paul ; " I recognize tones of the gos- 
pel in what you report of their sayings, and I 
rejoice that even in strife and vainglory Christ is 
being preached, though so imperfectly." "They 
do not mention Jesus," reply the youths, "their 
philosophy is secular." "Nay, my sons," replies 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 191 

the apostle, " there is no secular. All things are 
Christ's, and Christ is God's. But they do not 
say that, do they ? " " No," is the reply, " they 
ignore it altogether ; and though it puzzled us, we 
decided that we could worship Jesus religiously 
without having him in our philosophy. So we 
have done the best we could. But it is disturbing." 
" Yes," said Paul, " Christ has as much place in 
your philosophy as in your religion. But I will 
ponder over it, and write you what I think. Is 
there any God in this fullness ? " " No. God is 
too infinite and holy to be in it. It originated 
from Him, as all things do. He is the First Cause, 
but He is at an infinite distance. The demiurge is 
the creator of things." " I can teach you a more 
excellent way. But do not cease to learn all you 
can about it ; it is true as far as it goes. Worship 
aud obey the Christ, and learn this doctrine. The 
two will not conflict in the end. I will write you 
later." 

The young men leave and the apostle ponders. 
It is clear to him that it was the preaching of the 
gospel of Christ which forced the popular teachers 
into a more serious strain, and gave them, moreover, 
some hints. They were right about the fullness, — 
except that it must not be conceived of as Godless 
and Christless. To him God was in all, and Christ 
was in all. His life had been full and real because 
he had known Jesus. It was Jesus who had 
multiplied his relationships so marvelously; and 



192 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

relationships constitute life. Modern progress was 
offering him a fullness without God and without 
Christ. Should he forego modern progress ? Should 
he turn his back upon the wealth of culture there 
was in it, upon the throbbing life of the great 
centres which he had burned with discontent to 
capture for the gospel? Must he become a re- 
cluse, a separatist, an obscurantist, a reviler of 
progress? Or must he surrender these experi- 
ences of the Christ, which have filled his life so 
full? Must he tell these noble-hearted, clear- 
eyed, broad-minded, high-spirited young fellows to 
choose between modernism and the Christ he had 
preached to them ? Or shall he encourage them 
to live double lives, putting their Christianity in 
certain preserves, as we shut up our uncivilized In- 
dians on reservations. God forbid that he should 
do any of these things. 

There is no partition of interest, and no conflict 
between Christ and all wholesome modernism. In- 
deed, it was the stimulus of the gospel that caused 
the rise of that new doctrine in Asia Minor. It 
was the Christ-power that had so fructified the 
past as to produce the living present. Paul seized 
the vigorous modern thought and made it thrill 
with the gospel. This epistle of the Ephesians is 
full of the phrases that were heard in all the popu- 
lar lecture-rooms of Ephesns. The terms " heav- 
enly places," "prudence," "wisdom," "mystery," 
"fullness of time," "things in heaven and things 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 193 

on earth," " spirit of wisdom and reTelation," 
"principalities," "powers," "dominions," were all 
employed in the metaphysical speculations of the 
new philosophy. But while he uses these terms, 
he shuns metaphysics. The terms of his philoso- 
phy are not imaginary entities, but God and Christ 
and men and spiritual forces that actually work 
before his eyes in history. The fullness of time is 
the ripeness of human experience. The fullness, 
or plevoma, which constitutes the supreme and 
boundless reality of things, instead of being some 
speculative congeries of things not intelligible, is a 
society of redeemed men and women forming the 
body of him in whom was all the fullness of God. 
Paul captured the metaphysical philosophy which 
marked at that time the farthest outpost of modern- 
ism, and made good use of every part of it ; but he 
made of it a social and a religious philosophy. He 
made it concrete, he made it genuine and real. The 
fullness at which they had been aiming he declared 
was the fullness of a universe thronged w^ith God- 
hood and manhood, and the mystery they mulled 
over was the mystery of divine love. 

Life ! Yes the universe was crammed, not so 
much with an entity called life, as with a living 
God and a triumphant risen Christ and living 
men! It was a live universe, thrilling, vibrating, 
pulsating with the life of love, and the fullness of 
the universe was the full heart of God, full of the 
care of his children, full of complacency in them. 



194 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

Heaven and earth were crowded with population ; 
and if but the alienation that made mutual stran- 
gers and enemies of men could be removed, the 
fullness of God would be realized. The gospel 
was that it was the mission of the Christ to re- 
move that alienation, and that he had nailed it to 
his cross ; so that now strangerism, which meant 
hostility, was to cease, and all were to be fellow- 
citizens and of the household of God. It was a 
bold, a skillful, and withal a legitimate stroke for 
the apostle thus to occupy the most strategic points 
of modernism, and to plant there the standard of 
the gospel. It belonged to him by every right. 
He who had become the Christ had fulfilled all 
the philosophies ; and the preaching of him had 
been the direct cause of the foundation of that 
particular philosophy. While it was metaphysical, 
it is to be remembered that metaphysical thinking 
is only covert sociological thinking. Men took 
refuge from tyrants in the cave of metaphysics 
where they could express and yet conceal their 
thoughts. They did this rather instinctively than 
cautiously, hunted animals as they were. Had the 
world's despots suspected what potencies for the 
reform of life and the overthrow of vested wrong 
have been and are still hidden in the metaphysical 
formula for the Christian conception of God, they 
would have been as cruel and relentless in their 
hostility to it as they have often been in its de- 
fense. He that sitteth in the heavens must have 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 195 

laughed, the Lord must have had in derision those 
who, in imagining they were riveting the fetters 
of men, were only conserving the potencies of a 
liberty that was to be. It was fair, therefore, 
that Paul should claim this philosophy as an im- 
perfect and unintentional statement of the case of 
the gospel. It was the world-mind groping after 
the knowledge of the Christ. Whom they igno- 
rantly speculated about, him Paul declared unto 
them. The dry seeds of metaphysics, watered by 
the Spirit, brought forth fruit unto vital personal 
character and personal relationships. Read the 
first three chapters of this letter to the Ephesians, 
and observe how the apostle baptizes the phrases 
of the current philosophy with social and genuinely 
religious meanings. 

I shall not linger to make application of this. 
What I have said of the circumstances of its writ- 
ing, and of the actions and motives of Paul, and 
of his attitude toward the modernism of his day, is 
no fancy of mine, but, as nearly as I can learn, 
historically accurate. It teaches its own lesson. 
The gospel of Jesus is nowhere so vital as where 
it is most modernized. Dangers, indeed, there are 
in premature adjustments, but not so great as in 
stolid reactionism. Young men and women of to- 
day, in the name of Jesus I bid you make the most 
of it. To-day is a day of the fullness. This year 
we have just left behind us was a full year. The 
year we are beginning is to be fuller. Every year 



196 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

of this era is more intensely occupied than that 
which went before it. Politics, social intercourse, 
intellectual culture, business and professional in- 
terests of all kinds are crowding the days. 

But, young people, let this not be a Godless or 
a Christless fullness. It need not be. It is un- 
grateful and unphilosophical and unhistorical that 
it should be. For I tell you the very fullness of 
the life we live is the creation of Jesus, and 
through the preaching of him, as the new philoso- 
phy of Asia Minor had its initial stimulus in the 
apostolic missions. All our manifold material life 
to-day is dependent upon combined social stability 
and progress. This is dependent upon the exist- 
ence, permanence, and character of the fundamental 
human relationships, social and religious, and this, 
as can well be shown, depends upon the new social 
and religious spirit, for which the world is indebted 
to Jesus and the preaching of Jesus. For observe 
that only in those parts of the world where " the 
foolishness of preaching" is maintained does the 
social potency of this gospel minister to fullness of 
life. Young people, it is not a Godless nor a 
Christless fullness of life you are enjoying. It is 
the fullness of God, and it was made and is being 
maintained and increased continually by the Christ. 
I bid you in the year we are now entering upon to 
make the most of it, to multiply your relationships 
as much as you can, choosing them wisely, of 
course, not imagining that the Christ-life is lean 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 197 

and meagre, or chiefly represented by touch-nots. 
Carry with you the sense that there is nothing 
secular, there is no legitimate business that is not 
divine. A bright, honorable man came to me not 
long since, and said he wanted to get out of busi- 
ness and go into the ministry, because he said he 
could not be a Christian in business. Not a 
Christian in business ! I refuse to believe it. I 
told him that if he would try as hard to put Christ 
into business as to get money out, he could serve 
the cause there as he could not in the ministry. 
A railroad president, who recently resigned, told a 
friend of mine that he could be a Christian in 
every other capacity of life except as a member of 
the railroad managers' association ; there he could 
not practice simple truthfulness. When he testi- 
fied before the strike commission in Chicago, you 
can imagine how much I believed of his testimony ; 
and the commission seems to have been similarly 
impressed. I did not believe his testimony then, 
and I do not believe him when he said that he 
could not be an honest railroad official. Why, the 
railroad is part of the modern fullness, and it was 
Jesus who created it. I tell you, friends, that 
Jesus is the creator of the railroad, and he lies 
who says the Christ has no place in the railroad 
business. There are some people — Count Tolstoi 
is their prophet — who believe that all modern 
progress is based upon robbery, that it is of the 
Devil ; and having the courage of their convic- 



198 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

tions, they would go back to barbarism and to a 
starved and empty life. I admire tlieir consist- 
ency. They are better than those who believe as 
they do about modernism, but decline to make 
their choice. But I do not believe as they do. I 
stand with Paul that this modern fullness of life 
is the fullness not of the Devil but of God. My 
people, stand by modernism in the name of Christ, 
and enjoy it as children of God. 

These symbols, this bread and this wine, — I 
wish more of you thought seriously upon the 
meaning of them, — are the memorial of the 
divineness of all that is primary in those human 
relationships which have now grown so abun- 
dantly, and have ministered to the fullness of 
modern life. Simple they are, the symbols of 
the cell-unit of true life ; they mean that all the 
stability and all the constructive energy of the 
modern manifoldness of life are found in the 
sacrifice of love. They testify, and may they 
testify with regenerating force to some of you, 
that the fullness of modern life is not because of 
but in spite of its selfishness. Take out of it 
the yeast of self-sacrifice, and it would soon fall 
flat. Take away the salt of unselfishness, and it 
will putrefy. The closest of causal relationships 
exists between the body of self-sacrifice which is 
in the world to-day and the self-sacrifice of Jesus 
of Nazareth. The closest of causal relationships 
exists between that body of self-sacrifice and the 



THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 199 

memory of Jesus' sacrifice. The closest of causal 
relationships exists between that body of self- 
sacrifice and the stability and growth of the man- 
ifoldness of modern life. The closest of causal 
relationships therefore exists between the keeping 
of this memorial and the preservation of modern 
life from the forces of disintegration, between 
the keeping of this memorial and my individual 
safety and yours as we live the modern life. In 
so far, therefore, as it fulfills its mission as a 
symbol, it is a saving ordinance. 



XIII. 

THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set 
tip a kingdom which shall never be destroyed : nor shall the 
sovereignty thereof be left to another people ; but it shall break 
in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand 
for ever. — Daniel ii. 44. 

This is prophecy on a royal scale, founded 
upon the perception of those broader and deeper 
realities which the prophet's average contempo- 
rary could not discern, and the grasp of truths 
out of the range of the ordinary mind. It is the 
mission of the prophet to perceive whatever real- 
ity, religious, moral, social, political, possesses 
rightful human interest. And in this care he 
sees and declares concerning certain great polit- 
ico-historical facts, measuring and forecasting the 
world's imperialisms. Before him moves a pro- 
cession of mighty empires, each able by some 
peculiar superiority to overwhelm its predecessor. 
Already in his day the strongest and weakest of 
them all begins to loom up in the West, Rome, 
mixed of iron and clay, strong for conquest, yet 
unable to bring things into an organic unity, 
and hence creating by processes merely of de- 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 201 

struction an empire which for want of a higher 
constructive force will fall to pieces of its own 
weight. And the development of world-powers 
was in a way to be consummated by Rome. The 
image was to be completed by her. By her own 
nature she was to be the last, and, becoming her 
own rival, to destroy herself. Is the prophetic 
intuition foreseen ? And then after Rome, what ? 
Our prophet has an answer for that question, 
too, because his is not only prophecy but Hebrew 
prophecy. To the Hebrew prophet a thing or 
two was known of much consequence to the 
world's history, which his Gentile contemporary, 
though never so great a prophet, could scarcely 
dream of. For the Hebrew race was itself the 
agent, and a remarkably self-conscious one, of an 
historical force peculiarly its own. It was " the 
secret of Jehovah," and was " with them that wor- 
shiped him," as their psalter said. The mystery 
kept in silence from times eternal, but now hinted 
to the prophetic minds who followed the Jehovah- 
cult, was a mystery which much concerned the 
course of empires. The Hebrew consciousness, 
from Abraham down, had been an imperial con- 
sciousness, had anticipated an imperial destiny, 
and had been averse to realizing itself in anything 
short of imperial fashion. The expansion of the 
Hebrew state under David to almost imperial 
dimensions was no surprise or innovation ; David 
had the true spirit of Israel. The fortunate 



202 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

failure and contraction of it through the folly of 
Solomon and the bitterness of his successors did 
not dissipate the feeling that Israel's future had 
in its keeping imperial destinies. When, there- 
fore, the true Hebrew prophet contemplates the 
cycles of history, he cannot fail to assert with 
unwavering force that after Egyptian, Assyrian, 
Babylonian, Greek, and Roman imperialism fol- 
lows, with greater splendor and more permanency, 
the Hebrew imperialism. 

Moreover, this imperial tradition contained 
from the first the germ of the idea that Hebrew 
world-conquest was to differ essentially from that 
of the other powers. Hence, even in David's day, 
possibly in his own mind, there was a source 
of unsatisfactoriness about his achievements, as 
though they might be in danger of leading away 
from instead of toward the truest form of fulfill- 
ment of the imperial promises. But the Hebrew 
was put into something of a quandary by this. 
He could not give up the idea of imperial success, 
and yet he could not rid himself of the idea that 
there was to be a difference in kind between the 
Hebrew and the other empires. He instinctively 
sought a way to give expression to this difference 
without losing or lowering the sense of reality in 
the Hebrew as compared with other empires. 
Fortunately, he was no metaphysician, else in his 
reach after the spiritual he would have let go 
the material, and then, missing both, would have 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 203 

landed in an abstraction. We can never pay, 
we cannot even compute, the debt we owe the 
Hebrew prophet for holding on to the real while 
he aimed at the ideal, until the two became one. 
He was determined that the Hebrew world-con- 
quest should not be less real and concrete than 
that of Babylon or that of Rome. It was to be 
a part of actual history. If he conceived of it 
as a spiritual conquest, he did so not with the 
qualifying adverb " merely," as is the ordinary 
custom in these degenerate days, by which the 
spiritual is set in antithesis to the real rather 
than to the material, and a spiritual conquest 
becomes a mere ghost of a real conquest. If, as 
is natural, he could not think of a real world- 
empire without picturing it under materialistic 
forms, he had the courage of his materialism, 
and he so pictured it. That is not first which is 
spiritual, but that which is material ; and though 
abstraction as a logical process cannot be spared, 
that abstraction of the material which takes the 
place of the spiritualization of it opens the way 
to disastrous error. Christianity is in these days 
suffering a good degree of moral paralysis by the 
substitution of the abstract for the spiritual, so 
that thereby the material world and material 
things are permitted to appear much more real 
and concrete than the spiritual world and spirit- 
ual things. Genuine spiritual things are the 
more real things, and it is the fault or the weak- 



204 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

ness of our preaching, if we have not made them 
so to appear. The error is not one for which 
the Hebrew prophets are responsible. If they 
had fallen into it, if they had not been the splen- 
did realists they were, they would never have 
succeeded in bringing in the Hebrew imperialism. 
Yet, while in order to maintain their realistic 
position the prophets portrayed the coming world- 
conquest in half-materialistic shape, they saw 
and plainly intimated that there was to be some 
different and higher thing in it ; and that between 
the imperial Hebrew power and those which had 
successively ruled the world before it, the distinc- 
tion in nature and origin was radical. The pro- 
phet in this case jealously forbids the supposition 
that the Hebrew is to be one of a series of powers 
and to rank with them : hence he represents them 
as together making a complete image, which 
complete image the Hebrew power is in an un- 
precedented way to destroy and supersede. The 
Hebrew consciousness recognizes as its antagonist 
and rival, not simply the empire which happens 
to be for the time at the head of the world's 
affairs, but all world-empire, past, present, and 
future — "all rule and all authority and power.*' 
In truth, it was such an imperialism that whom- 
soever it crowned as its Caesar would have to be 
reckoned as not less than a god, and a god, too, 
not in the circumscribed sense in which it was 
ascribed to the deified Caesars of Rome, but in 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 205 

the uncircumscribed sense which deity came to 
have in the Jehovah religion. 

For this empire was the empire of Jehovah, and 
its Caesar wonld rank with Jehovah. Whatsoever 
man ever came to believe himself the Hebrew 
Messianic emperor, and nourished his imperial 
ambition upon the vaticinations of the Hebrew 
prophets, could be expected to claim nothing less 
than an exaltation to the right hand of Supreme 
Majesty. Upon such meat will the Hebrew Caesar 
feed and grow to his greatness. Of such historic 
necessity was the ascription of godhood to the 
Jewish Messiah. 

As all the world knows, one did arise who, in 
full sincerity and with adequate ability and am- 
bition, did undertake to fulfill the Messianic ambi- 
tion of the Hebrew prophets. And as his imperial 
enterprise unfolded itself before him, and his im- 
perial consciousness developed in pace with it, he 
grew to fulfill and to create the reality which, with 
sure prevision, they had foretold, while in turn the 
forms of his ideas were largely fixed by his famili- 
arity with the prophets themselves. This prophecy 
from which our text is taken was a favorite with 
Jesus whenever he contemplated his mission in 
its broader and more comprehensive features. Its 
imagery served to picture, not only to his disciples, 
but to his own mind, those transcendental anticipa- 
tions he had of his future relation to the world as 
its Lord and Master. His idea of the divinity of 



206 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

his empire caused him to claim deification for him- 
self, instead of robbing the empire of concreteness 
and tangibility. He wanted the earth and he 
claimed it, and set his enterprise going with an 
imperial character. 

From that day to this, Christianity, whenever 
it has been true to itself, has been an imperial 
movement. It has aimed at, and can consistently 
aim at nothing short of, world -conquest. It has 
not always been easy for it to do this. At the 
beginning it had to regain something of the 
breadth of the old prophets' idea. In Jesus' day 
Judaism had frittered away its imperialism, and in 
two directions. Palestinian Judaism had permit- 
ted its sense that it ought to rule the world to take 
the form of a narrow and isolating pride, which 
only unfitted it to do so, and made certain its 
failure to do so. Alexandrian Judaism, on the 
other hand, and there were as many Jews in Egypt 
as in Palestine, under the lead of Philo. whose 
highest aim was to reconcile Plato and Moses, was 
ready to reduce Israel's highest claim to that of 
possessing the universal religion, an example which 
easy-going Christian teachers frequently follow. 
Now, the Hebrew and Christian claim is much 
more than that they have the universal religion, 
though they have that among all else. Hebrew 
imperialism is not a mere doctrine, or set of doc- 
trines, any more than is British imperialism, al- 
though doctrines are important to it, as the main 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 207 

doctrines of the British constitution are essential 
to British imperialism. The Hohenzollern doc- 
trine, or dogma, is quite an essential factor in 
German imperialism, as it stands to-day. But 
German imperialism is no mere doctrine ; it is a 
fact of blood and iron. The doctrine of manhood 
suffrage and equality seems to most of us to be 
essential to our position as the modern imperial 
republic. But the fact of our republican imperial- 
ism is something else, and something greater than 
this and all other doctrines combined. It is the 
fact to which the doctrines only appertain. It is 
a necessary incident to the Christian imperialism 
that it should have the universal religion. Some 
believe, and I am of the number, that it is a 
necessary incident to Christian imperialism that its 
theological conception shoidd be trinitarian, that 
it should not only worship the All Father, but 
that it should deify Jesus and the spirit of holi- 
ness. But to identify the Christian imperialism 
with the idea of universal religion, or the dogma 
of the Trinity, is quite to surrender it. 

Yet that is one of the commonest and most 
enervating errors of to-day. Too many of us are 
Philonists, when we ought to be Christians. The 
true Hebrew imperialism of Jesus' day was not 
found in the liberal schools of Alexandria any 
more than in the conservative sects of Palestine. 
It was found in that remnant to which belonged 
Zacharias and Elizabeth, and Mary and the Beth- 



208 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

lehem shepherds, and Simeon and Anna, the rem- 
nant that gave birth to the Messianic King and 
fed its expectations neither upon rabbinical tradi- 
tions nor upon philosophical speculations. Their 
utterances show the true Hebrew imperial con- 
sciousness better than all the writings of the rabbins 
or of Philo ; and from them and their utterances 
in public and private came the nutriment for the 
development of the Messianic character in the. 
man of destiny himself. 

So nearly empty of true imperial consciousness 
was the official Judaism of Jesus' day, that, in 
spite of his own most magnificent self-revelations 
and self-assertions, the infant church would have 
been dwarfed into a Jewish sect, had not circum- 
stances provided a capital for it elsewhere than at 
Jerusalem. Jewish Christianity soon dried up into 
a new species of Pharisaism, and the church at 
Jerusalem became a mere group of separatists. 
But there stepped into the arena one Saul of 
Tarsus, a Jew of Jews, yet a Roman citizen of no 
mean Greek city. Back of this, of course, lies 
some history. It was no mere accident that Paul, 
a Jew of the dispersion, rescued Christianity from 
sectarianism to Catholicism, that his spirit had no 
rest until he crossed the Bosporus, and planted 
the standard of the cross on the continent of the 
Occident to which belonged the future, until in 
turn it passed it on to a farther one yet undiscov- 
ered ; that in all his journeying his face was to- 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 209 

ward Rome, so that lie could rejoice even in bonds 
which carried him to the imperial cit} r . This was 
no accident. Something in Paul's antecedents 
put that spirit into him, the same, probably, which 
made his father a Roman citizen and an inhab- 
itant of one of the Greek university towns. Paul 
added nothing to the imperial consciousness of 
Jesus. The assertion has been made, but cannot 
be sustained, that it was he who exalted Jesus to 
the right hand of God, and made him King of 
Kings and Lord of Lords. Paul really made no 
claims for Jesus which Jesus had not made for 
himself ; what he did was to rescue those claims 
from a threatened oblivion. By starting from 
Antioch, and making it instead of Jerusalem the 
capital of Christendom, by setting up the standard 
of the gospel in Ephesus and Athens and Corinth, 
and possibly also indirectly in Rome and Alexan- 
dria, he established in imperial centres points 
whence the imperial authority of Jesus could make 
itself felt. 

And so the Christian consciousness after some 
vacillation proved true to its origin in the Hebrew, 
and held to its imperialism. This has been the 
occasion, it is true, as it was in Israel, of bad mis- 
takes, which might have been avoided had its 
claims been more humble. It generated a worldly 
ambition, and brought about the mesalliance with 
Roman imperialism, the ugly spawn of which, half 
God, half devil, has not ceased to afflict the whole 



210 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

earth. The fruit of this unlawful union is not 
confined to that which is still called by the Roman 
name ; for the union was consummated at Con- 
stantinople, and the Eastern church shares its evil, 
while what is called the reformation did not quite 
change the complexion of the whole northwest, 
nor could ecclesiastical and political rebellion re- 
move the taint from the blood. Protestantism, 
indeed, as its name implies, was in many respects 
more of a reaction than of a reform ; and in this 
respect especially, that, instead of rescuing the 
idea of imperialism from the errors which had 
gathered about it, she sacrificed it almost alto- 
gether, so that her crying sin is sectarianism, like 
that of Jerusalem in the days of the early church. 
Almost the only imperial tradition which the 
reformed churches retained was the Augustinian 
theology. Because it was imperial it has done 
superb service. And this service is not less the 
result of its imperialism, though one choose to 
question whether it be not more Roman than 
Hebrew, whether its God has not more of the 
qualities of Jove than of Jehovah, whether the 
earlier Christian idea of God, not as a single irre- 
sponsible will, but as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 
one God blessed forever, can come again into the 
organic thought of the church, except in propor- 
tion as the sovereignty taught by Augustine is at 
least reduced to a strictly constitutional form. 
And even Augustinianism, imperial in at least the 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 211 

Roman sense, lias some time in the past fallen into 
the service of sectarianism, as Caesar's clay might 
be used to stop a chink. It is wholly safe to pre- 
dict that, unless Protestants can recover the Chris- 
tian imperial consciousness, Protestantism, like 
Jerusalem, must be deserted, and the work of 
fulfilling the Christ-mission must go elsewhere. 

It is believed by some that a race is beginning 
between Romanism and Protestantism to see which 
shall Christianize the world. To imperialism of 
the Hebrew kind alone belongs that destiny. 
Rome has the imperialism, but seems to fail of the 
Hebraism ; it is rather the old Augustan imperial- 
ism. Protestantism has the Hebraism, but has let 
go the imperialism ; it is the Hebraism of Philo or 
of Gamaliel. 

" Now," say some, " give us a Western pope ; 
one who is able to think in English ; one who 
knows that the English tongue is as truly the 
imperial language of to-day as was the Latin 
when it became the sacred tongue of the Church. 
Let him relegate that which is obsolete in Rome 
and Romanism to the museums of ancient history. 
Let him make his headquarters on the Thames or 
the Hudson ; or, better still, let him recognize the 
fact that, with the opening of the Chicago exposi- 
tion, the capital of English-speaking Christendom 
moved from Canterbury, where it had been for a 
thousand years, to Central North America, where 
it will be for the next thousand years. And let 



212 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

him acknowledge that where the English-speaking 
capital is, there is the capital of all Christendom. 
There let him plant himself, and re-Christianize 
the Roman church by occidentalizing it, and he 
has enough imperialism to become the arbiter of 
the world's destinies." 

On the other hand, let Protestantism come up to 
the level of its own great idea. Let it forget its 
littlenesses and negations. Let it remember that 
history dates farther back than John Robinson, 
or Roger Williams, or John Knox, or John Cal- 
vin, or Martin Luther ; farther than the Saybrook 
platform or the Westminster or Augsburg con- 
fessions ; that the world cannot be made to spin 
about the meaning of a Greek particle. Let it 
cultivate the historical sense, which it has lost or 
trifled with. Let it realize that it is an organic 
part of history, and that its sacred scripture is the 
literature of the greatest of histories. 

Let it regain its imperial consciousness, and let 
this consciousness become, as it easily may, an all- 
prevailing motive in the breasts of its humblest 
followers, and Protestantism can sway the des- 
tinies of mankind. 

One hundred years from to-day the world will 
be English speaking. German and French will 
be of as little relative importance as Welsh and 
Portuguese are to-day, and Spanish and Italian 
will rank where Gaelic does to-day. To-day the 
English-speaking world is overwhelmingly Prot- 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 213 

* estant, and socially it has an imperial conscious- 
ness. The Briton or American feels that he be- 
longs to the race to which belongs the world, and 
he bears himself accordingly, and when occasion 
comes he manifests that imperial race-conscious- 
ness in splendid fashion. But how about his 
Christian consciousness ? Is that imperial ? or is 
it paltry, provincial, sectarian? Augustinianism 
aside, the fairest substitute the English-speaking 
Christian has for true Hebraism is commonly 
Alexandrianism, on one hand, or Pharisaism on 
the other, according as he belongs to what is called 
the liberal or the conservative wing — the liberal 
being Alexandrian in its type, and the conserva- 
tive Palestinian. Neither of these possesses that 
imperialism which has the promise and potency 
of world-conquest. It is deplorable, but it is true, 
and must be said, that the imperial English-speak- 
ing race is not dominated by Messianic impe- 
rialism. 

But substantial progress is making toward that 
end. The race between Romanism and Protes- 
tantism from opposite directions for the goal of 
world-conquest has begun, and is provoking good 
effects on both sides. On the Roman side it has 
begun by the effort to give a true Messianic char- 
acter to the existing imperialism, to use imperial 
position to further Christly ends, as Cardinal 
Manning so habitually did, and as is witnessed 
by the tardy quickening of the conscience of the 



214 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

Vatican on the slavery issue, by the zeal of the 
late Cardinal Lavigerie, by the new humanitarian 
attitude of the Pope on the Sunday question, 
and the well-meant, if rather crude, deliverance 
upon the labor problem. The movement is halt- 
ing, but it is a movement. Too much must not 
be asked of it at first. It is not easy for the heir 
of the Caesars to play the Christ. 

In Protestantism the progress has to be in a 
different direction, and has accordingly begun by 
the effort to use Christly influence on a princely 
scale. And since this is an intensely practical 
age, this progress shows itself in deeds rather 
than in ideas. Nor is this unprecedented. The 
writings which have produced the most profound 
effect, even doctrinally, upon the Christian church, 
are a dozen business letters of a man whose care 
of the churches was so heavy that he had no 
opportunities to prepare treatises. The most sig- 
nificant aspects of the modern church are pre- 
sented in the great charitable and missionary 
movements, comparable to nothing else since the 
first century, and surpassing the similar move- 
ments of that age. In these is seen the reawaken- 
ing imperialism in the Messianic consciousness 
of Protestants. I have looked into the text-book 
used in the training of the officers of the Salva- 
tion Army. The theology is narrow, and the 
controversial parts much out of date. But every- 
thing is redeemed from what would otherwise be 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 215 

pitiable weakness by the ring of the imperial 
purpose of world-conquest, which is through it 
all. The action of those little bands which march 
the streets with flags and martial music is not 
ridiculous. It is a symbolic expression of their 
determination to play a part, however humble, 
in the conquest of the world, and it ought to 
shame some of those who look down upon it out 
of the small-mindedness which has lost sight of 
this imperial purpose, without which the Christi- 
anity we ourselves profess ranks no higher than 
any one of a hundred other isms. 

It is a fact that the first great Protestant mis- 
sionary movement started from narrow sects, as 
though sectarianism had swung to an extreme, 
and then set out on the return movement. Nar- 
rowness has a certain advantage in generating 
intensity. It acts like the bore of a gun barrel, 
and the mystical pietism of certain reformation 
sects in Germany first began to react from itself 
in the form of missionary activity. For the piety, 
though narrow, was genuine, and could no more 
be content without the "communion of saints" 
than without the other evangelical privileges 
claimed by the Catholic and Apostolic creed. 
Having cut itself off from the rest of Christianity, 
its yearnings went out after the heathen world. 
In England also missionary enterprises began 
among those whose broader activities were not 
permitted in the realism of thought. It is easier 



216 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

to act than to think. The life of action is the 
life of least resistance, and so imperial activity 
has preceded imperial thought elsewhere. The 
first American missionaries who labored in India 
and Burmah held contracted views on many- 
points. But there was nothing contracted, noth- 
ing less than imperial in their spirit and action, 
in which they laid the foundation of the kingdom 
of Jesus ; so that it was Christian rather than 
British imperialism that first set foot in Southern 
Asia, and Christian imperialism promises there 
to complete the conquest in which British impe- 
rialism is having some success. I think one may 
be free to say that for two centuries the thought 
and organization of Protestantism have often been 
provincial, undignified, not worthy of the church 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of all things. 
But the aggressive zeal, the evangelical impetus 
of Protestant Christianity have been growing more 
imperial for a hundred years, and it now needs 
only to take council of its own impulse and enter- 
prise, and think its thought, and organize its work 
accordingly, and seek to infuse the spirit of it 
into its entire membership. And this is coming 
about with much rapidity. The charge has truth 
in it that breadth of thought has not been com- 
monly associated with aggressive zeal. Had such 
a man as Mr. Moody, when the impulse to act 
came to him, waited to equip himself with a set 
of religious conceptions commensurate with his 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 217 

deeds, lie would have grown old before he reached 
the deeds. But clothing his zeal in ready-made 
and sometimes ill-fitting notions, he went on to do 
his work, and it is a small mind which cannot 
feel the breath of his imperial activities. 

Half of us nominal Christians have no idea of 
the magnificent proportions which Christianity is 
assuming in our day. We fail to realize how 
Japan is grasping the thought and imitating the 
activities of Christendom, so that in ten years 
Japan may be as Christian as America, fresher 
in her thought, and more abundant in her Chris- 
tian zeal. We do not know, half of us, that a 
rejuvenation of customs and a recrystallization 
of the ruling thought of the ruling class in India 
is imminent, and we are heedless if not ignorant 
of the fact that no thought can crystallize or re- 
crystallize to-day other than under the dominance 
of Jesus of Nazareth. Most of us fail to realize 
the imperial possibilities of the Central African 
movement, and that Christianity will there meet 
and compete, not with heathenism, for that will 
retire without a fight, but with Mohammedanism, 
and Mohammedanism on the only soft side, the 
only human side which Mohammedanism presents 
— the side of Madhism, which is a species of 
undirected and abortive Moslem messianism. All 
the rest of Mohammedanism is impenetrable, hard- 
crusted deism. Christ's road to Mecca lies up 
the Congo and down the !Nile; and that imperial 
highway is being opened. 



218 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

Do people know all this ? Do Christian people 
know it? Do newsgatherers discover this im- 
perial fact ? Nay, if they have a scent for news 
of that kind, it is of little commercial value, be- 
cause we with our mercantilisms and our denom- 
inationalism care little for such news. The fault 
is ours. 

We should, however, and I trust that we who 
are here do share in the waking up, which is 
giving to Christendom a new imperial conscious- 
ness, which will not stop short of bridging the 
widest chasms and bringing in a new and all-em- 
bracing Catholicism — a new consciousness, and 
yet an old consciousness, inherited from the father 
of the faithful, who believed that in him all the 
kindred of the earth should be blessed ; a con- 
sciousness whose horizon is as distant as that of 
national faith. 

We are Americans, citizens of an imperial re- 
public, whose present greatness surpasses descrip- 
tion, and whose prospective destiny beggars imagi- 
nation. Let us match our national consciousness 
with a Christian consciousness equally imperial. 
The more should we as Americans do this, because 
it is a fact which can be shown by incontestable 
historical evidence, that, great as is our material 
heritage, our nation is indebted more than to any- 
thing else to the Hebrew-Christian imperialism for 
those constructive ideas which have made it great, 
and carried it successf ully through the crises which 



THE IMPERIALISM OF CHRISTIANITY. 219 

have come to it. Lowell is as accurate as he is 
poetical when he describes our nation-makers as 
" stern men with empires in their brains." We 
have the most adequate explanation of the presence 
of those empires in those brains when we know 
that the brains had been nourished upon the He- 
brew scripture, that infallible source of conceptions 
great enough for men to live by. We hear inade- 
quate ideas of Christianity sometimes apologized 
for, on the alleged ground that they serve men to 
live by. But, pray tell me, what it is for a man 
to live ? How much room does he need ? For 
my part, if you give me less than an empire to live 
in, I shall smother, I know I shall. Let us claim 
what belongs to us. We call Jesus King of Kings 
and Lord of Lords. We forget half the time that 
we are the kings of whom he is king ; the lords 
whose overlord he is. The imperial consciousness 
has its place in every life. It is not for the few, 
the privileged, the cultured, those whose grasp of 
mind and range of opportunity is large. Chris- 
tianity is democratic. It belongs to all, and the 
preacher of it commits a fatal error if he imagines 
that he knows anything too good or great to be 
imparted to the humblest. For the gospel is sav- 
ing truth ; it is a conception at once valid for to- 
day, and great enough to be intrusted with the 
eternities. 



XIV. 

THE DELUGE. 

And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house 
into the ark ; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this 
generation. — Genesis vii. 1. 

This account which we have of the deluge in 
the book of Genesis is the Hebrew edition of a 
legend which is current among all primitive races. 
It is not necessary to assume that the legend is 
based upon a single occurrence. The more prob- 
able explanation of it is that there have been few 
primitive peoples which have not, at some time 
within the dim memory of tradition, been obliged 
to survive great natural convulsions in the form of 
floods, when most of their members were lost. 
It would be natural that the number of survivors 
would shrink in the telling, until at last it would 
be but the necessary minimum. The earth has 
been subject to cataclysms ; and, since the condi- 
tions were such that early man lived in the valleys 
and river-plains, the occurrence of floods would be 
among the most important of those cataclvsms. 
It is not strange, therefore, that such legends 
should be found everywhere. 



THE DELUGE. 221 

As the races made progress, men would begin to 
reason it out why some survived, while others were 
lost. The mind of early man was of strong reli- 
gious bent, and it naturally attributed the loss of 
the many to the anger, and the salvation of the 
few to the favoritism of the gods. Such was the 
raw material of legend with which the Hebrew 
genius had to deal when it undertook to construct 
its ideal history of the primitive world. Now the 
Hebrew mind was also religious, like that of all 
other races ; and when it came to revise the legend 
of the flood, it did not propose to eliminate the 
religious element from it. To the Hebrew, as to 
his neighbors, that emergency was caused by God 
because of men's unfaithfulness, and the survival 
of the few was a work of the divine approval. 
But the Hebrew was not only religious, he was 
also moral. To him the divine approval or dis- 
approval was founded upon moral discernment. 
It was not because of capricious anger that the 
many were condemned to be swept away, but 
because they were actually corrupt, and the earth 
was filled with violence. The Hebrew mind con- 
ceived of God as acting in this emergency less in 
anger than in sorrow. Nor was it because of a 
capricious favoritism toward Noah that he was 
spared. It was "because he was a righteous man. 
It was because of character. 

And so the Hebrew genius reconstructed the 
legend of the flood in its own way, to represent 



222 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

what it conceived to be the leading facts in the 
development of the race. The element of origi- 
nality in the Genesis account is not that it in- 
vented or recorded the story of the deluge, not 
that it put religious ideas into it ; it is that it put 
a holy God and moral character into it. The 
whole key to the Hebrew legend of creation and 
of early man is found in this : in its effort to 
maintain that the ethical was in the world from 
the beginning, and that at every important crisis 
of affairs it was the ethical interest which was 
determinative. 

The account of the deluge which we have in 
Genesis is vague and somewhat confused, because 
it is an attempt, not very completely carried out, 
to combine two separate versions into a single one. 
Even the unlearned reader will have no difficulty 
in distinguishing for the most part these two 
stories. Wherever the word " Lord " in small 
capitals, standing for Jehovah, is employed, the 
passages belong to one account ; while when the 
word " God " is used, they belong to the other. 
For the most part the editor has simply mixed the 
two accounts, so that it is not difficult to separate 
them. In a few places, however, he has fused 
them together so that no one can distinguish, and 
there may have been a third version employed in a 
few cases. What is here worth observing is that, 
after we have taken apart this story, resolved it as 
far as we can into its older constituents, we find 



THE DELUGE. 223 

that each, of the older authors, while they vary in 
details, agree in the one thing which distinguishes 

this story from all other legends of the flood : they 
agree in making it appear that, in some way or 
other, moral worth was the saving factor at the 
period when the race had to pass through a great 
natural crisis. 

This is noteworthy. It shows that the inspira- 
tion of the Hebrew scriptures is older than the 
final author of the book of Genesis, whoever that 
may have been : that the Hebrew spirit, which, as 
Matthew Arnold loved to say. reckoned conduct 
and character the supreme basis of safety, was 
present at the literary creation of the very ele- 
ments which were afterward worked up into the 
book of Genesis. The Hebrews had two versions 
of this story, both inspired with that which distin- 
guishes the Hebrew life and literature from all 
other. If it be claimed that Moses wrote the book 
of Genesis, then not only was he inspired, but he 
was the editor of inspired matter whose authors 
were older than himself. If it be held that the 
editor lived one thousand years after Moses, yet 
he uses material which, for all we know, may have 
been as old as Moses, and is inspired with the 
Hebrew ruling idea that righteousness counts for 
everything. 

It was important that, if the Hebrew constructed 
anv ideal historv of earlv man. he should oive to 
that history dramatic completeness by showing that 



224 THE IMPERIAL CHBIST. 

he had the power to survive natural convulsions. 
If he was evolved, it was in an Eden, but he was 
not evolved for an Eden. While he lingered in 
or about the confines of an Eden, the resources of 
his manhood could not be thoroughly tested. The 
man being, as the Hebrew conceived him, in the 
image of God, — that is, having been once adjusted 
to an absolute environment, — must prove himself 
superior to immediate circumstances ; and the power 
to do this must be evoked by a change of circum- 
stances so great and sudden as to require, not 
merely the ordinary plasticity and adaptability of 
the animal, but the skill and forethought and 
fertility of resource of a very god. It was not, 
therefore, without an eye to symmetry and com- 
pleteness that the author of Genesis inserted an 
account of the deluge in his epic of humanity. If 
his choice of material was controlled by his know- 
ledge of human nature alone, there is reason enough 
why he should have made the deluge a part of his 
story. 

All legends of the deluge agree that, from a 
material point of view, a crisis had come in the 
history of man. According to some, as has been 
said, the survivor escaped by pure favor of the 
gods, by accident, or by magic. Others credit 
him with superior skill and foresight. It is the 
Bible story alone which makes a moral crisis to 
impend along with the material. Here the moral 
purpose and the inspired genius of the Hebrew 



THE DELUGE. 225 

writers appear, for it is a fact that moral and 
material crises have a way of coming together. 
Sometimes the coincidence is accidental ; emergen- 
cies of both kinds are so frequent, that remarkable 
coincidences must occasionally occur. But far 
more frequently the same cause produces both. 
Our recurring financial crises are nearly all both 
material and moral. Not only trade but the spirit 
of trade is in need of a general liquidation and a 
fresh start, and because of the operation of the 
same causes. Then, again, a material crisis often 
produces or hastens a moral one. The moral turn- 
ing-point in many a man's life has been where cir- 
cumstances forced him to take a new direction, or 
make a new choice of motives and maxims. He 
has been hustled out of the nest in which he was 
reared, which he had not the courage or enterprise 
to leave of his own volition ; the emergency has 
awakened the needed spirit, and he has risen to 
the occasion like a man. Sometimes a moral 
emergency has hastened a material crisis. The 
material strain in the relations of the American 
colonies to the mother country need not have com- 
pelled a separation for a century, had not moral 
incompatibilities provoked a revolution. 

Man's moral and spiritual faculties are the 
record of our intimate relationship at some time 
or other with some corresponding moral and spir- 
itual environment, and constitute a demand for a 
continuance of the relationship. Man is a unit, 



226 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

and so is his environment. He does not consist 
of two wholly separate parts, of which one can 
be alive and thriving, while the other is dead and 
putrescent. God does not hold two entirely dis- 
tinct relationships to man, one by nature and the 
other by grace. The distinction between the ani- 
mal and the spiritual man is important, but it is 
somewhat less than absolute. Emergencies are 
sure to come when a man's material welfare is 
involved in his spiritual welfare, when God as 
the sum of material force and God as the great 
spiritual force are seen to be one and to be work- 
ing together. These emergencies may come about 
in the natural way, and the conjunction of the 
material and the spiritual crises may be purely 
accidental ; yet it is an accident which is sure to 
come at one time or other in the history of every 
race and of every man. The histories of nations 
show times when neither guns, nor fleets, nor 
armies, nor government credits, nor anything else 
than national virtue can save the national life. 

There must have been a time in the history of 
the race — else it would not come to nations and 
individuals, who are copies of the race-life — 
when material and spiritual emergencies so coin- 
cided, that only the person of the highest spiritual 
character could pass safely through the dangers 
of the social crisis. The story of the deluge 
affords to the writer of Genesis a dramatic frame- 
work upon which to portray this event in the race- 



THE DELUGE. 227 

history. The favoring material conditions, which 
had fostered man's earliest development, came 
abruptly to an end. All the highest qualities of 
a manhood made in the image of God were de- 
manded to weather the storm, and make the tran- 
sition into new conditions. But that manhood 
had been corrupted, and only one small group 
could be found walking with God, possessing 
such a spiritual life as to clear its intellect and 
strengthen its purpose and nerve its arm for the 
emergency. The spiritual degradation of the race 
blinded and debilitated and unnerved it, so that 
it could neither foresee nor forefend the trial of 
its manhood. The material crisis came, the 
fountains of the great deep were broken up, the 
ordinary material foundations of life removed, 
and men were unprepared for it, and ruin came 
upon them. 

The tragedy has been repeated many times. 
There were outward and material causes for the 
fall of Rome. The pressure of the barbarians 
had nothing to do with any internal weakness of 
Rome herself. Yet the external crisis corre- 
sponded with an internal one. Rome's moral 
grandeur was in ruins. The splendid moral en- 
ergy which had made her victorious over Greece 
and Carthage had been dissipated and corrupted, 
and Rome was morally unworthy to stand. But 
the Roman Church, the Noah of that deluge of 
barbarism, survived, and perpetuated the germs 



228 THE IMPERIAL CUBIST. 

of material and spiritual civilization, which were 
to reclothe the new world with life and beauty. 

This country has come to a crisis in its material 
prosperity. The un equaled resources of the land, 
the marvelous material growth of the nation, 
have produced a giant whose frame is too large 
for his vitals. The time has come again to this 
nation, as it came to those before us, when virtue 
is its only salvation. The problems which con- 
front it, material problems though they be, cannot 
be solved upon the low plane of material inter- 
est. They will not be solved by men's " voting 
for their pocket-books." Laissez-faire will never 
solve them. As it was in the days of Noah, men 
went on eating and drinking, buying and selling, 
borrowing and lending, marrying and being di- 
vorced, and giving little heed to preachers of 
righteousness, who were warning them of im- 
pending ruin unless they began to seek, not each 
his own, but each his neighbor's w T elfare. There 
is no safety, no material safety, any longer, except 
in the law of Christ. Materially man is the 
creature and the sport of circumstances. Hence 
he has no right to feel secure upon any material 
foundation. The Rocky Mountain range may 
sink under the ocean any day. There is not a 
business firm which no combination of circum- 
stances can wreck, and at the last extremity 
men will count for more than assets. There is 
in the whole texture of human life such an inter- 



THE DELUGE. 229 

weaving of the material and spiritual that, with- 
out any interference with the natural run of 
events, crises like that of the deluge are occurring 
daily, in which material prosperity or even exist- 
ence are staked upon spiritual standing. Men 
are satisfied with material success, with amassing 
fortunes, organizing enterprises, enlarging their 
business, building houses, planning profitable 
schemes, while they forget that, according to all 
the laws of probability, the time will come when 
nothing will float these things above the rising 
tide of adversity but the fact that, like Noah, they 
have walked with God. 

We must make a very broad distinction be- 
tween the material and the spiritual, between the 
animal man and the spiritual man, between God's 
dispensation of nature, so-called, and his dispen- 
sation of grace. The old heresy has been refuted 
a thousand times, that a man's or a nation's tem- 
poral success or failure, and their worth, are 
reciprocally the measure of each other. God 
sends his rain and sunshine upon the just and 
unjust impartially, and the wicked often seem to 
prosper, and do. But even philosophy and 
science are denying the absoluteness of the dis- 
tinction between the material and the spiritual. 
The study of human nature in the light of the 
spirit of the Son of Man shows that, amid all 
the countless coincidences of human life, it is sure 
to happen at some time, that even temporal sue- 



230 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

cess or ruin will hinge upon spiritual relation- 
ships. A deluge will engulf every man, body and 
soul and spirit, the whole material universe w r ill 
be arrayed against every man, the stars in their 
courses will fight against, the solid continents 
will shrink away and refuse to uphold the feet 
of every man, who ceases to walk with God, and 
who breaks away from spiritual fellowship with 
God. But in the same light of the spirit of the 
Son of Man we may also learn that, in some way 
or other, the soul which loyally maintains its 
spiritual relationships will be borne up superior 
to every misfortune, and be set down, after the 
waters of grief and trial have subsided, upon the 
solid mountain of the Rock of Ages. 



XV. 

THE WINE-TILTERS. 

Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on 
his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither 
hath he gone into captivity : therefore his taste remaineth in him, 
and his scent is not changed. Therefore, behold, the days come, 
saith the Lord, that I will send unto him them that pour off [tilt], 
and they shall pour him off ; and they shall empty his vessels, and 
break their bottles [jars] in pieces. And Moab shall be ashamed 
of Chemosh, as the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel their 
confidence. — Jeremiah xlviii. 11-13. 

The figures of speech used in this prophecy need 
to be understood, before the meaning can become 
plain. The people for whom the prophet was 
writing were familiar with the processes of mak- 
ing wine, to which he here refers. Each family 
pressed out its grapes, and left the juice standing 
in vats or jars to ferment and cast its sediment to 
the bottom of the vessel. Then, without disturbing 
this sediment or lees, the wine was poured oft into 
other receptacles, and again left for another period 
of fermentation. This might be repeated many 
times before the wine was called perfect in tone 
and flavor. It is easy to see that without pumps 
or siphons this racking was a delicate operation. 
A little want of skill might stir up the sediment, 



232 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

and liberate its foul gases to bubble through, the 
wine, and spoil its taste and degrade its quality. 
For this reason certain men — tilters they were 
called, because they skillfully tilted the vessels — 
made a business of going from house to house to 
pour off the wine in the best waj^, so as to stir up 
the lees as little as might be, and yet get off as 
much of the wine as possible from them. If these 
professional pourers, or tilters, happened not to 
visit a house and the wine was left unchanged in 
the vats, the processes of fermentation would go 
on all the same, and the wine would be wine, but 
it would never be perfect wine ; it would reach a 
limit in its power of self-purification. It would 
indeed separate its sediment and precipitate it to 
the bottom, and the coarsest of it would remain 
there. But it would breed foul gases and nasty 
flavors, which would rise again into the wine and 
spoil its tone and retard its ripening. The fer- 
mentation principle was able to perfect its work 
only with the help of the tilters to remove the 
sediment, which it kept casting to the bottom. 

Jeremiah utters a prophecy both of judgment 
and of hope concerning Moab. Moab was far be- 
hind Israel in real development of character, and 
he gives the reason. Moab and Israel had begun 
with equal advantages. They had inherited the 
same germs of civilization. The common belief 
that this was the case was expressed in the tradi- 
tion that Moab was descended from the righteous 



THE WINE-TILTEBS. 233 

Lot, the nephew of Abraham. Iu spite, therefore, 
of their frequent quarrels, they always recognized 
this tribal kinship. It was a question, therefore, 
that naturally came to the mind of a prophet and 
seer, why Israel had made so steady advances, 
while the Moabites were about where they had 
been for centuries, were worse indeed, since national 
stagnation is itself retrogression. The two nations 
were alike in ancestry and in original faith. And 
this made the resemblance particularly close, sines 
that was, and the prophets of Israel knew it was, a 
vital faith, a fermentation principle, which, yeast- 
like, drew its own distinctions in its own way, and 
carried one set of impulses to the top, and sent 
another set down toward the bottom. This was 
the spirit, and it was the same in both Lot and 
Abraham. The root of the matter was in them 
both. So the prophet attributes the apathy and 
decay of Moab, not to his not having had the right 
kind of possibilities in him, but to the mere fact 
that he had had a more peaceful career than Israel. 
The two nations had, as he believed, begun at the 
same point, and with the same internal possibili- 
ties. The difference was that Israel had never 
had the opportunity to settle on his lees. After a 
period of rest long enough to permit the spiritual 
principle in him to precipitate the coarsest elements 
to the bottom, he was always removed just in time 
to leave the worst of it behind him. 

Jacob's life was an epitome of that of the nation, 



234 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

if indeed he be not a personification of it. See 
how his character was clarified by the vicissitudes 
of fortune. When he first appears, he is about as 
unpromising and unattractive a mixture of enter- 
prise and dishonesty as is found in history. But 
there was a kind of spiritual ferment in him, that 
brought the better part of him to the top, at times 
at least, even though it was only when he dreamed. 
He was passably good when asleep, and this slight 
advantage on the side of goodness was seized by 
circumstances. When he moved on, as he seemed 
doomed to do, he always took it with him and left 
part of his meanness behind. It is a hard thing 
to say of any man, but it was true of Jacob, that 
his mother was his evil genius. When his sin and 
hers made him a fugitive, he left her behind. He 
was a better man after his dream than before, and 
when he came to Pad an- Aram he proved equal to 
a sincere love for Rachel. Then the process of 
spiritual fermentation went on, and separated the 
better elements from the worse, until Jacob, like 
many a modern, came to be living two lives, one 
in his home, ruled by his better self, and one in 
his business, ruled by his old cunning. Then 
came another visit of the tilters ; Jacob's business 
relations were broken up, and he went back to his 
own country, which he could not enter until he 
had left most of his worst self behind. Then he. 
buried Rachel, and his love for her, which had 
done so much for him, was sealed and consum- 



THE WINE-TILTERS. 235 

mated in the sanctuary of his soul. But still 
other un settlements and migrations, still other 
visits of the pourers, were needed before Jacob 
was fit to be ranked among the patriarchs. 

What is related as having befallen him was 
often repeated in the history of the nation named 
after him. Nomads, slaves, refugees, outlaws, wan- 
derers, invaders, shepherd soldiers, husbandmen 
who tilled with weapons girded by their sides, 
again slaves and captives, — such had been the 
fate of Israel. Peace never lasted more than long 
enough to prepare for war. Prosperity continued 
only long enough to tempt the rapacity of the 
spoiler. Success only added to the bitterness of 
subsequent defeat. How Israel must have envied 
the quiet and security of Moab, perched away in 
the hills, inaccessible to armies, safely out to one 
side of the highway where marched and counter- 
marched the contending forces of hostile empires, 
undisputed in its occupancy of the soil and its per- 
petuation of institutions, customs, and traditions. 
The tilters never visited Moab. Moab was not 
led into captivity. Moab was not hunted into the 
desert. Moab had been at ease from the first. 
Israel must have found it hard to see the justice of 
such favoritism. Did the great God love Moab 
better than Israel the chosen ? 

But look into it once. The true spirit had been 
in both at the first. Its ferment could not permit 
either of them to remain in the*moral and spiritual 



236 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

infancy that marked the other nations about, which 
had it not. It wrought in Moab as in Israel. 
Moab knew more than his neighbors about moral 
distinctions. He had clearer views of truth. The 
more truly spiritual came to the top and the 
coarser fell to the bottom in his life, as in that of 
Israel. This is intimated by the legend that 
Moab knew a prophet of the higher rank and sent 
for Balaam. But in the same story of Moab's 
bargaining with Balaam we detect the fatal cor- 
ruption which had been wrought by the continued 
presence in Moab of those baser, more sensual ele- 
ments, which had been only precipitated, and had 
not been racked off. This glimpse into the spirit- 
ual life of Moab shows what would happen in the 
wine that stood on its lees. Not only the flavor of 
fermentation was there, but mingled with it and 
spoiling it was also the flavor of decomposition in 
the sediment, rising like the poisonous babbles 
that witches are fabled to gather from foul bogs. 
There were high moral and religious perceptions 
mingled with a sacrilegious purpose to degrade 
them to personal or political ends. It was not 
because the Moabites were ignorant heathen, but 
because they were reprobate and renegade believers 
in the high God, that they proposed to hire a pro- 
phet of Jehovah to curse the people of Jehovah. 
The process of purification, through the spiritual 
fermentation that was going on, had not only 
reached its limit, but the good it had done had 



THE WINE-TILTERS. 237 

been worse than undone by the counteraction of 
the principle of decay set up in the lower nature, 
now that it had been separated from the higher 
and left to itself. With Israel it had been differ- 
ent, for every now and then Israel had been com- 
pelled to move on, and every time he moved he 
carried with him the best and left the worst be- 
hind, where it could no longer corrupt him. 

The different experiences of Moab and of Israel 
are the experiences of many of us. It needs not 
only God's spirit, it needs also his providences to 
bring us out into the ripeness and sweetness of a 
mature Christian experience. The providences of 
God often seem to deal very hardly with many. 
The particular purpose of God in his providential 
operations you and I cannot fathom ; but that all 
the unsettlings to which he subjects us may become 
means of grace, many know by rich experience. 

The tilters have visited them, and poured them 
from vessel to vessel. They have never become 
firmly settled in one place or in any one manner 
of life or upon any object of affection, but just 
then their peace was broken up, and they were 
compelled to begin all over new again. The loss 
of a position at a critical period, the failure of a 
business 'enterprise, the death or desertion of 
friends, the breaking up of homes, the breaking 
down of health, — these things have come along in 
succession just as they supposed, each time, that 
everything was settled, and they were at ease for 



238 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

life. They see their neighbors living on with no 
such overturning^, like Moab, in easy circum- 
stances. They cannot understand it. 

But now, my brother, whose life has been, like 
Israel's, that of a wanderer and a stranger on the 
earth, with no abiding-place, with no secure em- 
ployment, with no certain income, with no con- 
tinued robustness of health, with no long lease of 
cherished companionship, — review your history. 
First and most important, has there been a spirit- 
ual fermentation within you, always striving to 
bring the best to the top and to cast the worst to 
the bottom? If there has not, then all the pour- 
ings of the pourers continued forever will not leave 
you any better. When you are poured from ves- 
sel to vessel, you take with you what is uppermost 
and leave behind what is undermost. If there is 
no tendeney for the good to get and keep upper- 
most, the pouring will never result in permanent 
and complete separation of the good and evil in 
you. But if the spirit be in you, so that, every 
time the pourer appears in the form of an affliction 
to disturb your peace, he finds that the worst thing 
about you is the thing which is at the very bottom, 
he will pour you off and leave it behind, and you 
will be rid of it. Thus at each change, distressing 
though it be at the time, the last remnant of some 
evil habit, or some false notion of life, or some 
corrupt desire, or some base appetite was left be- 
hind you forever. Your growth in spiritual refine- 



THE WIXE-TILTERS. 239 

ment in your period of ease had indeed precipitated 
these things, so that they would never have' come 
to the top again in their old gross form ; but they 
would have refined themselves into some other 
subtler form of evil and have poisoned your life, 
as the sediment in the wine cask sent up its fetid 
gases. TTe often see a spiritual life tainted by 
what is really the sublimation of a sensuality or 
an avarice, which has been put under by the influ- 
ence of the spirit of the Christ, but has not been 
removed. 

Moab had been at ease from his youth. The 
falters had not visited him to pour him from 
vessel to vessel, neither had he gone into captivity. 
He counted himself more highly favored than 
Israel, whose life had been a series of misfortunes. 
But Israel, largely by the help of these misfor- 
tunes, had outgrown the low forms of worship of 
his early life, had refined his conception of his 
God, had brought his service into a high spiritual 
plane, had divested it of most of the remnants of 
the sensuality and even bestiality that once charac- 
terized it, had, in short, grown ashamed of Bethel, 
the sanctuary of his honored ancestor Jacob, and 
had gone up to Mount Zion to worship ; while all 
these years Moab had never outgrown that form 
of worship and service which the idea of Chemosh 
inspired. Her spiritual life had been poisoned, 
and her spiritual growth had long since ceased ; 
the processes of purification had reached their 



240 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

limit. And the best gospel the prophet could 
preach to Moab was the prediction that she should 
begin to pass through experiences like those of 
Israel. Israel was therefore the more fortunate, 
inasmuch as she had already endured and profited 
by these things. 

It is common to distinguish between the fortu- 
nate and the unfortunate classes. To which of 
these classes we shall belong w r e can do a little to 
determine, but not everything. Be we never so 
wise, prudent, careful, and industrious, misfortune 
can easily find us out. It is the habit of many 
who have been favored by fortune to say that 
every man can succeed if he sets out to. Well, he 
simply cannot, in the sense in which they mean 
success, especially under a system where the success 
of one is so largely dependent upon the compara- 
tive failure of others. Not many of them suc- 
ceeded because they set out to succeed. What is 
called chance had not a little to do at points with 
this success. Not one man in a thousand can 
command success independent of circumstances, 
and he who can did not himself originate the com- 
bination of abilities which gave him that peculiar 
power. It was usually inherited from the misfor- 
tunes of his ancestors. Few of us who to-day be- 
long to the class of fortunates can take all the 
credit to ourselves, and few of those who are un- 
fortunate deserve the whole blame. If the chief 
thing in life were to get on the side of fortune, 



THE WINE-TILTERS. 241 

life would be a game of chance with the dice 
loaded for adversity, and no secure bank for any 
winnings one might happen to make. 

But the sure thing — and this is the gospel we 
preach — the sure thing of which we would give 
men the hint, is that an element can be introduced 
into life which can so far transcend the distinction 
between fortunate and unfortunate as even to re- 
verse it. 

I should be the last person to say that the 
question of fortunate and unfortunate classes in a 
community is not an important one. Whatever 
the causes, — ignorance, weakness, shiftlessness, 
unfair legal systems — which produce unnecessary 
inequalities, they should, if possible, be removed. 
If they are common causes, we should make com- 
mon cause against them. If they are national, 
national efforts should be put forth. If they may 
be wisely legislated against, legislation should be 
employed. The gospel we preach is not one which 
forbids men's trying to better their individual or 
common circumstances. It is not a gospel of 
political, social, industrial fatalism, and only of 
individual and other-worldly optimism. It is not 
a gospel which says, " peace, peace," while the 
elements of social or industrial warfare and an- 
archy are preparing themselves through the wild 
and unpractical radicalism of one class and the 
selfish and stupid conservatism of another. The 
gospel is a social saving force, a political saving 



242 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

force, an industrial saving force, as well as an 
individual saving force. It does not save society 
through the individual, any more than it saves the 
individual through society. It strikes at all angles. 
Two classes of persons would rather we did not 
preach the whole gospel : those whose personal lives 
need renovating demand that we preach a gospel 
of social reconstruction and let the individual con- 
science alone ; and those who with irreproachable 
personal habits profit by social injustice wish us 
to preach individual regeneration and let society 
alone. And when this issue is raised, a bitterness 
like the ancient odium theologicum is manifested. 
It looks as though the next great schism in the 
church might come along these lines. To-day the 
best definition of a Catholic church is one which 
refuses to take sides on this issue, but maintains 
the complete gospel, necessary and effective for 
the whole body of humanity, both in its individual 
and in its corporate characters. " I believe in 
the holy Catholic Church." 

I have thus digressed because the particular 
message I have at this time is one of comfort and 
hope and contentment for the individual, and I 
do not wish it to be supposed, as it sometimes is, 
that such a message ought to act as a sedative 
to legitimate social discontent or agitation. It 
should not be forgotten that this gospel for the 
individual is the product of a social evolution, 
and that our text refers, not to the individual, but 



THE WINE-TILTERS. 243 

to the respective national experiences of Israel 
and of Moab. They were nations, not men. The 
same laws operate in society and in the individ- 
ual, and the same redemption is needed, and it 
is by no artificial or accidental analogy that we 
find the experiences of those two nations fit us 
as individuals. It is because of a fundamental 
identity of nature. A gospel which does not 
apply to both society and the individual will soon 
cease to apply to either. 

To return, then : the word of truth and comfort 
which ought to come to each life is that there is a 
way by which misfortune may become' an inesti- 
mable aid in the perfection of character. If there 
be this element of fermentatioD in one's life, which 
never ceases to separate the better from the 
worse, and to bring the one toward the top and 
throw the other to the bottom, it may not be a 
very strong tendency ; but if only it be there each 
time an unsettlement comes, it brings one off 
better than it found him. Some evil or worthless 
habit has gone to the bottom, and in the change 
it has been left behind, while the perhaps only 
half-formed good habit went over into the new 
circumstances. "Where you are, perhaps your 
efficiency is hindered by a habit you have. You 
have tried with partial success to overcome it. 
Your final success is prevented by the fact that 
the habit itself has partly determined your envi- 
ronment. But now you are obliged to change. 



244 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

From most points of view that is a misfortune, 
yet it does free you from the incumbrances which 
your habit had put in your way. Had you not 
gained a partial mastery, your change of position 
would not have bettered you. But in giving you a 
chance to finish the work of conquering your habit, 
the misfortune was transformed into good fortune. 

So the person who has this new life, this yeast 
or leaven of the Christ-character, will not only 
make the most of what comes to him, he will 
learn even to glory, as the prophet of Israel did, 
in the fact that the tilters had poured him from 
vessel to vessel, so that each time he left behind 
something of the sediment of sensuality, of ani- 
mality, of worldliness, of avarice, of ill temper, 
of grossness of conception concerning God, of dull 
ignorance of spiritual things. He grows ashamed 
of Bethel, with its coarse and materialistic bar- 
gaining with God, and he goes up to Zion to a 
purer service of a truer God. He counts it joy 
when he falls into divers trials, knowing that the 
trial of his faith will generate a power of endur- 
ance, and he is willing that this should have its 
perfect work, that he may be perfect and entire, 
wanting nothing. 

I know I speak to some who have thus been 
visited by the tilters again and again, in whom 
each successive affliction has left a purer liquor 
of spirituality with a more perfect flavor and a 
more enduring quality, until to-day the purity of 



THE WINE-TILTERS. 245 

saintship has begun to manifest itself to all about 
them. We cannot rejoice that they have been 
afflicted, for a dread mystery is there, but we can 
rejoice that the leaven of the divine life was so 
in them that the results have been blessed. Some 
again may be like Moab. They have the root of 
the matter in them. The yeast is there. They 
come of goodly stock, and did at one time yield 
themselves to the Christ, who perpetuates into 
this age the spiritual germ which wrought in Is- 
rael and Moab. But they have been at ease from 
the first. The tilters have let them alone. The 
pourers have passed them by. What might, 
therefore, have been a gross appetite has been put 
down, but, not having been eliminated, it has 
risen again in subtle vapors into the higher life, 
so that it is as though their spirituality had been 
sensualized. Their avarice cannot make them 
crack safes or go into fraudulent bankruptcy; 
but it blinds them to the nature of the source of 
some of their profits, or it steals their best service 
from God and man. Their religion remains 
about as it began. It is no higher in its type 
than it was twenty years ago. They are not 
ashamed of Chemosh, as Israel became ashamed 
of Bethel. And while they felicitate themselves 
upon their freedom from misfortune, and perhaps 
accept it as a mark of divine favor, it may be 
they could pray no more timely petition than that 
which we sing so thoughtlessly, — 



246 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

" Nearer, rny God, to thee, 
E'en though it he a cross 
That raiseth rue." 



" Where slopes the beach to the setting sun, 
On the Peseadoro shore, 
Forever and ever the restless surf 
Rolls up with its sullen roar, 

" And grasping the pebbles in white hands, 
And chafing them together, 
And grinding them against the cliffs, 
In storm and sunny weather, 

" It gives them never any rest, 
All day, all night, the pain 
Of their long agony sobs on, 
Sinks, and then swells again. 

" And seekers come from every clime, 
To search with eager care 
For those whose rest has been the least : 
For such have grown most fair. 

" But yonder round a point of rock, 
In a quiet sheltered cove, 

Where storm ne'er breaks and sea ne'er comes, 
The seekers never rove. 

" The pebbles lie "neath the sunny sky 
Quiet f orevermore : 
In dreams of everlasting peace 
They sleep upon the shore. 

" But ugly and rough and jagged still 
Are they left by the passing years ; 
For they miss the beat of the angry storms 
And the surf that drips in tears. 



THE WINE-TILTERS. 247 

" The turmoil hard of the pitiless sea 
The pebhle turns to beauteous gem : 
So they who escape the agony 
Must also miss the diadem." 



This is a law of human life. That progress 
toward perfection, which Moad missed through 
good fortune and Israel gamed through ill, cul- 
minated in the cross of Him who was made per- 
fect through suffering. 

His is the gospel we preach; not that trials 
and losses, that pain and bereavement, that sore 
disappointments and disillusionments are good in 
themselves ; but that there is a way by which all 
these shall work together for good. We may, 
indeed, not have to endure all the experiences of 
those throuoii whom the Christ-life first wrought 
itself out in the world ; for when once that life 
had fulfilled itself, its grace and beauty of holi- 
ness became self-imparting, so that we may be- 
come partakers of his grace and theirs, whose 
sufferings were not only for their own salvation, 
but for that of the whole world. 

When we have come thus far, we may gain a 
glimpse of a still more profound and precious 
secret of the gospel of Christhood. Jeremiah, 
who gave utterance to the words of this text, was 
greater in his life than in his words. The highest 
level of revelation is reached in history, and Jere- 
miah was a man of history. It was the memory 
of Jeremiah's unmerited sufferings for others' 



248 THE IMPERIAL CHRIST. 

sins which was the saving potency that preserved 
and sanctified the hopes of Israel during the great 
exile, and carried her forward in her Messianic 
development. The contemplation of it gave to 
the eye of her later prophet the first clear view 
of the master truth : that the noblest end of suf- 
fering is not even our own purification and com- 
plete salvation, but that of others ; that the highest 
law of this universe yet known is not that of 
discipline, high though that be, but the law of 
vicariousness. It was the history of Jeremiah 
which suggested those marvelous words, " He was 
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised 
for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace 
was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed." 

When, if ever, we have come up to the level of 
that idea, — the idea of Jeremiah's life which 
transcended his thought, — and it has taken a 
firm hold upon us, then may we learn, what a few 
souls have known, the luxury of pain, in the ex- 
ultant faith that, though we cannot unravel the 
web of cause and effect, we do actually share in 
the sufferings of him who is thereby taking away 
the sins of the world. When we consider how 
closely interwoven are all life's interests, it is not 
impossible to understand in part, how not only 
our own sins but the sins of others are racked off 
by the pains which we endure, to understand at 
least enough to give partial warrant and power of 
realization to that faith. And when partial know- 



TEE WINE-TILTEES. 249 

ledge and triumphant faith thus unite to pour 
into the heart of the sufferer the conviction that 
not a pang is without avail in the cleansing away 
of sin, then like the soldier who, flushed with love 
of his cause and assurance of victory, feels wounds 
only as an intoxication, torture and pain will be 
a stimulus to a higher exultation, and with each 
throb of agony the victim will cry in ecstasy, 
" Another sin vanquished ! " and the law of the 
Christ shall be fulfilled. Thus pain shall be 
transmuted to the noblest bliss. Such a miracle 
this gospel is able to perform. 



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